


Glitch

by Tabi_essentially



Series: Wartime verse [7]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Abduction, Amnesia, Badass, Established Relationship, Fake Marriage, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Technology, unbreakable!Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabi_essentially/pseuds/Tabi_essentially
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur wakes in a hospital with no memory of who he is or how he got there. All he knows is that someone messed him up pretty badly, and his dreams are violent and terrible. After weeks of wondering why no one has bothered to look for him, he just about gives up. Eames is the one who finds him. They have to discover what a mysterious group of people did to Arthur and his former team to make dreaming so dangerous for them. And they need to find the "Glitch Machine" that is the cause of mass dreaming hysteria, and undo its effects on Arthur and the dreaming community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was also based on a handful of prompts at the kink meme. [A list of prompts.](http://sho-no-tabi.livejournal.com/12172.html)

**FEBRUARY**

Eames walked along the overly-bright, sterile hallway. His fingers found the poker chip in his pocket, next to the forged passport with Arthur's picture, new social security number, date of birth, and the name "Arthur Bishop" printed on it. "Bishop" was Eames's original last name, and Arthur would just be galled to learn that he'd given him his old name. When he found the irritating son of a bitch. Because he would.

This excursion – well, it was just a formality really, just a way to turn every stone. There was no way Arthur was here.

It was two weeks since Eames had gotten the call that had cut off suddenly with a choking gasp. The number hadn't come up. The only number that was ever blocked on Eames's phone was that of the only man who knew how to thoroughly block his contact information. In all the years he had known Arthur, he'd never found a way around that block.

He'd tried to call, text, email any and all of Arthur's secure and not-so-secure contacts for the week after that. He'd called Cobb, asking if he'd heard from Arthur. _'He had a job out east,'_ Cobb had said. ' _Why, did you need him?'_ Cobb had been with his kids for two years now, and had gone on to become a legitimate dream-therapist and professor. He'd lost his instinct for trouble except for where it concerned his children. Cobb's use to the world was of a different sort now – a more noble one, possibly. But of no help to Eames.

"This way, please," the orderly said, opening the door to the morgue. The orderly was professional, stone-faced, and showing no trace of sympathy yet. Eames had forged some missing person documents and come stateside, the last place he knew Arthur had been. He had access to just about every morgue, hospital or legal document he needed.

Eames kept tabs and did it very well, but was shit at it as compared to Arthur, as most people were. So he'd followed every John Doe lead he could find. The latest one (dark haired male, scarred, between the ages of 25 and 30 – he knew Arthur was 32 but easily passed as younger,) had led him to the county morgue in a Georgia town.

He stepped inside the room full of cold drawers and waited, quiet and tense. For a moment a feeling of unreality swept him. Eames had done his share of IDing the bodies of work associates. It always felt dream-like. 

The orderly pulled out one of the drawers and Eames forced himself to step up, as professional hands unzipped the black bag.

Short dark curls framed a young face with a bow-shaped mouth so similar to the one that had occasionally panted across his shoulder that he had to stare a moment. Blood had been cleaned away from a deep slice on the blue-mottled skin of the forehead. They eyes were already sunken behind the lids.

He released the breath he was holding. Someone's son, brother, husband, lover. But not Arthur. He shook his head.

The orderly gave him a small smile and showed him out.

** ** ** **

**JANUARY**

Arthur had not lost his instinct for trouble, because Arthur had never gone totally legal. He had tried, briefly, to follow Cobb into the overworld of dreamsharing. But as meticulous and exacting as Arthur was, he had little use for other people's rules. He dreamed because he loved it, not because he needed money. Eames's line of work was more to his tastes lately.

The last job was a simple corporate extraction on a mark named Havrey, a museum curator. It had gone well until the actual dreaming part, when Arthur's sense for trouble had flared to life in a field of too-docile projections. The rest of the team he had sussed out far before taking the job and they were all legit as far as he was concerned. He'd gotten his friends in high places to look into them (which he rarely did anymore – so maybe he had sensed something even before the end.)

If he was being played, then his entire team was being played.

The projections of their mark had acted normally until the actual extraction and then they had become too docile, too predictable. Too still. Arthur was on the top level when he saw it: the flicker of the projections as one, as if they existed on a screen instead of as real, vital pieces of a human psyche. He felt cold. The dream felt dead. Arthur felt, for the first time, as if the dreamer had died while he was in the dream.

The projections all froze as one, like they were stuck. One of them started looping, lifting a tea-cup to its lips, putting it down, and doing it again and again. He heard a high-pitched, mechanical whine that split his head wide open more violently than any dream-death and he fumbled for his gun. 

Arthur blew his brains out on the first level and woke up topside, fighting the urge to puke his guts up in the small hotel room they'd chosen for the extraction.

The guard, a guy he'd culled from military black ops, was dead at the door, his brains on the wall.

He suppressed the urge to be sick and got to work. The rest of his small team was still under, their bodies jerking and twitching as if trying to wake up. The PASIV was hooked to his team and the mark, as he had left everything. NOT as he had left everything, the mark himself was hooked up to a separate machine, one that Arthur didn't recognize. An actual, whirring machine, that had wires like the PASIV and something that looked like a hard drive.

Arthur slammed the button on the PASIV, setting it to zero and rousing the rest of the two-man, one-woman team. One of the men, an architect named Mr. Allen, came awake vomiting. Then he crumpled from the chair and went into a twitching seizure.

The mark, Havrey, did not wake.

"Get him out," Arthur ordered the other two, pointing to Allen. "We're not alone. I'll take care of the rest, just get yourselves out."

"What the fuck, what the _fuck_?" the extractor, Yuri, was shouting. He tried to make it to the door alone and stumbled on the body of their guard and then vomited on it. He started to hyperventilate.

"Help me, damn you!" the woman, a pretty redhead named Alice May cried as she tried to lift Allen on her own.

"Fuck," Arthur said. He had to get his team out, but he had to have that gadget they'd all been hooked up to so he could find out what the fuck it was, and he had to have all their backs as they exited, and most of all he had to know who was behind this shit. But Yuri was a coward who was running from his team and Allen was busy seizuring and Alice May was tiny and sick, her lips white as she tried to lift her fallen team-member herself.

Arthur slammed the PASIV shut, handed it to the girl, and in a surge of adrenaline threw Allen over both shoulders. Allen jerked and twisted and almost made him stumble down the stairs. He coughed and writhed, getting foamy drool down the front of Arthur's jacket that he wouldn't even care about later. He had to get back and get that fucking machine. 

But the team came first.

He got them all to the garage of the hotel, shoved Allen onto a trembling and hysterical Yuri and told him, "Man up. Get out of here and get him help."

"What the fuck, what the _fuck_?" Yuri babbled, as if those were the only words left in his vocabulary.

"That's what I'm going to find out," Arthur said over his shoulder as he ran back toward the stairs. "Get out of here."

He couldn't leave without the device the mark had been hooked up to. It had done something to them, something he'd seen and felt and did not understand. He wondered if Havrey was in on this. 

He made it to the third floor when he heard footsteps running down to meet him. This was no one he knew; his team was already escaping. This had to be whoever had set them up.  
 rthur wrenched open the door to the third-floor hallway of the hotel and threw himself through it, pulling it closed behind him. Someone shouted "In there!" and Arthur ran, shoving past two hotel guests making their way back to their room. The door behind him flew open and a group of men in flak jackets came after him. 

Arthur ran towards a man carrying a tray of room service. He ripped the metal tray and a stainless steel fork from the man's hands, spilling plates and glass everywhere, and then dodged around the corner of the hallway. He pressed himself back against the wall and waited. He had his gun, but could not fire it among civilians. 

The first man came around after him, and Arthur swung the metal tray into his face. It made a tremendous, reverberating "BWONG" sound that would almost be comical if he wasn't being hunted by a group of unknown assailants with unknown weapons.

The man fell, and Arthur began the count.

_One down._

He dropped the metal tray—it would only slow him down—held onto the fork, and ran towards the next door.

 

** ** ** **

 

**FEBRUARY**

Sixteen days since Eames had heard Arthur gasp over the phone before the line went dead. Sixteen days, five states, two morgues, ten hospitals, three jails, fifty three forged documents. Eames had been a doctor, a special agent (that one wasn't too hard to do,) a psychologist, an American detective, a concerned brother.

He was a good tracker. He was no Arthur, but then no one was. He liked to think maybe he was second best and finding people. He was sure that Arthur was still alive, just because dying wasn't Arthur's style. Arthur was going to live long enough so that all of the injuries of his youth would be aches and pains of old age. Arthur was going to live long enough to tell stories to neighborhood kids about the Golden Days of dreamsharing. About going under with the legendary Cobbs, about getting chased through mad towns, dodging bullets, extracting from the mob, jumping out of windows, firing his Glock out of moving cars, and his torrid affair with the mysterious forger. Adventuring into old age was Arthur's style.

Not dying anonymously and never being found.

The next John Doe on his list was laid up in a hospital on the East coast. Another "dark-haired male, scars but no ID, badly injured, 25-30, lucid but with amnesia."

Eames liked that lead a lot, because it would be just like Arthur to feign amnesia in order to keep his identity private while unable to be released. He didn't like the sound of "badly injured" but it was better than dead. Lucid was good, too. And if Arthur had his shit together enough to play the amnesia card, even better.

Eames got intuitions, and they were rarely wrong. Mr. East Coast John Doe was giving him one such intuition.

He got on the plane to New York.

** ** ** **

**JANUARY**

_Two_ , Arthur thought, as he stuck the fork into the shoulder of the man who had cornered him in the stairwell.

The man had grabbed him by the arm and twisted. Arthur had just used the momentum to turn and stab him, and this dickhead was lucky he hadn't gone for his throat or his eye. The reason he hadn't was because they weren't shooting at him. He did bash the guy's head into a wall, however, knocking him out. Then he kicked him a few stairs down, so it would seem like he'd gone down the stairs instead of back up to the room.

He still wanted that device. They would expect him to have gone down the stairs anyway.

He heard the door to the stairwell fly open one floor down, where he'd just left. He heard their footfalls descending the stairs, as he had planned. His breath burning in his lungs, he lunged up the stairs, taking three at a time. Fourth floor. Fifth. Sixth. The room had been in the seventh.

When he got to the door of the seventh floor, he unholstered his Glock, preparing for ambush. Tried to lick his dry lips and still his hands. Took a second to breathe. Then pushed the door open slowly.

The hallway was empty. The door to the room they had been in in stood open. Arthur made his silent way down the hall, gun clutched in both steady hands. He was alert and just as ready to hold his fire as to shoot. 

Since the door was already open, he peered into the room instead of bursting through it with the element of surprise.

The room stank of vomit, blood and chemicals. He stepped over their dead guard. In the center of a circle of chairs was the PASIV device, which was still hooked to Havrey, who was inexplicably hooked up to the whirring machine that they—whoever they were--had fed into them. 

There was no time to look at it now. There wasn't even time to call for backup – not that he knew anyone to call who could get to him in time. Cobb was out of the business, and on the other side of the country. Eames was on another continent. Later, he'd call for help, at least in finding out what the fuck this was.

For now, he just grabbed both devices. Havrey did not wake, and Arthur didn't have time to wait around to question him. He made for the fire escape.

He was in the alley below the hotel, just about having caught his breath, when they came around the corner and saw him.

Arthur turned and fled.

 

** ** ** **  
 **FEBRUARY**

 

"He didn't have any ID," the doctor informed Eames as they sat in a private room, the late afternoon sun streaming in through clinical looking blinds. Dr. Grisham was a young woman, small, dark-haired and with perpetual dark streaks under her eyes. She looked smart, sharp, kind, but not easily-fooled. Luckily, Eames's job was fooling the not-easily-fooled.

Today he was the husband of the missing person, because Arthur would hate that.

The window outside showed a field of winter-storm white, dotted with winter-dead trees. Eames was exhausted. He'd slept only a little on the plane before coming right down here.

"Some kids found him in an old train-yard. He looked at first like someone who'd been purposely left for dead, but the more I examined him the more I thought that wasn't the case. None of his injuries looked like they had intent to kill. The fact that he was dangerously hypothermic and unresponsive really did seem accidental. We thought at first that he was robbed and possibly left to die. Just not _purposely_ left for dead. Whoever attacked him could have killed him, but didn't. We found traces of ketamine in his system, and further investigation revealed a puncture on his back. Like someone had hunted him on safari. Ketamine slows the system down enough to preserve it through hypothermia, so the fact that he was drugged with that specific chemical is probably what saved his life. We estimated he'd been there for about a day. He was in a coma for about three days, and then he didn't speak for a few days after he woke."

"What did he say?" Eames asked. "When he did start speaking." His own voice sounded dry and too quiet. He swallowed hard.

"Not much, and nothing about himself. He's very polite. Friendly, everyone likes him. But."

Eames gestured for her to go on.

"His injuries are not accidental. Some of them are defensive and not all of them are new. If this is your missing person, then he's involved in some very serious business. Mr. Bishop, I know a dangerous man when I see one. This could end up with the authorities and out of my power. We haven't handed him over because of the extent of his injuries. But without anything to go on, we might have to."

"He's not dangerous," Eames said. "At least not if it's Arthur. Look, you know how things are. People like us, we have to defend ourselves. Also he's military, you see. He's bound to have scars. He served, and it wasn't an easy tour."

She smiled at that, maybe a little bit fooled. It made sense. Everything Eames had forged for his identity was air-tight. 

"We were about to hand him over today," she went on. "Not to the authorities, but to a special facility."

Something in Eames stirred then, some sense of foreboding. He wondered if his intuition had been wrong, that he had followed another bad lead and that Arthur was nowhere near this place. "What sort of speciality facility?"

"For sleep disorders," the doctor said.

Eames stood up, agitated. He fished around in his pocket for the forged passport. "Look. Just tell me if this is him before I keep wasting my time," he said, as he slapped it onto her desk.

She glanced at it, turned it towards her, and stared. Then she looked back up at Eames.

"Come with me, Mr. Bishop."

He followed her out of the office and to the elevator. As the doors slid open, a tall nurse with dark hair stepped out and said hello to Dr. Grisham.

"Hello, Emma," the doctor said. "How is Scout?"

"Sleeping," she said. Her eyes suggested something more meaningful than that. Whoever they were talking about was doing something other than natural sleep, that much Eames got.

Emma looked from Dr. Grisham to him, and finally, as he was getting into the elevator, she took a good long look. Her eyes lit up in a kind of revelation that meant nothing to him. She caught the elevator doors before they closed and leaned in.

"Oh my god," she said. "Are you here for Scout?"

Eames was about to say no, but Dr. Grisham gave them both a small smile.

"Scout?" Eames asked. 

"You are!" Emma squealed. "Oh my god, you're here for Scout!" And she threw herself at him, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek, the picture of unprofessionalism. "My god, finally! What are you, his - his brother? Oh, I don't even care! You're _someone._ "

"All right," Dr. Grisham said. "Let's not get too excited yet. It could still be a mistake." Her eyes said that she knew it wasn't.

"I'm confused," Eames said. "Scout?"

Instead of answering, the nurse named Emma just grabbed him again and squeezed.

 

** ** ** **

**JANUARY**

_Three,_ Arthur thought, as he bashed one over the head with a glass bottle from the trash can. 

He threw the trash can in his wake as he sprinted into the street.

With both devices tucked under one arm, he ran into the traffic. Jumping up onto the hood of an oncoming car, he took a few deep strides, and then leapt off of it.

_Four_ , he counted as one of his pursuers tried to follow him and instead crashed into the side of the car.

He rounded an intersection and thought for a moment that he had lost them. Then a black car came screaming up beside him and pulled to a stop. The door opened. He had a second to see the man in the passenger seat looking at him with focused intent, and then start to get out of the car, drawing something from the holster at his hip.

Arthur turned the other way and ran, away from the busy streets.

Now they were chasing him in cars instead of on foot, and it was not a small group. He heard a helicopter. Glanced up and didn't see it. What he did see, though, was a man in a flak jacket crouched on a rooftop. He saw him only fleetingly, but he knew what it looked like when someone was aiming something at him.

_What the fuck is this,_ he thought frantically, because this wasn't some small-time rival group. This was something much bigger, something that recalled the days of running from Cobol. 

He had to start using his weapon soon, and he couldn't do that on a crowded street. Arthur dodged down another alley, one that was thankfully not a dead-end. He glanced up to the rooftops and saw no one lurking there. 

The alley led out to a parking lot, mostly deserted and not yet plowed. A ridiculous winter storm had hit the night before and the snow was thigh-high. New York was a mess. Arthur wondered about the rest of his team, wondered how far they had gotten without him. He hoped that they'd had sense enough to get Allen to a hospital. He would clean up the details of who they were and what they were doing later. They had all been hooked up to the machine he now carried under his arm, but Arthur had the distinct feeling that it was him they were after, and that the rest of his team just happened to be in the way. They were small-time. Arthur knew that he wasn't.

The high snow was going to slow him down, but he had to cross the parking lot and get over the chain-link fence. He had no jacket, hat, gloves or boots – they were all back in the hotel. All he had was his drool-and-vomit stained suit, a red die in his pocket, the PASIV and the mystery device, his cell phone, and the gun.

If they showed up again, he would start shooting whether they opened fire first or not. Now might be a good time to call for help, though. He dug the phone out of his inside pocket and flipped it open.

The next sound he heard was that of an air-pressure rifle being fired. A tuft of snow burst up into a small cloud next to his thigh. Arthur looked down at it and saw a glint of metal in the snow beside him. The air-pressure rifle sounded again, and another dart flew over his head.

He didn't have time to look for the trajectory; he knew the shooter was behind him. He hit the snow, tucked the cell phone away, and started crawling. The snow offered him a little cover, if he kept low like this, tunneling instead of trying to walk.

His breath came harsh and cold. Within ten seconds his fingers were numb and he was desperate to hold onto the mystery device. If he had to, he'd let go of the PASIV first. Whoever was chasing him already knew what it was. He needed to know what was in the machine he'd been hooked up to.

The sound of the air-pressure rifle came again and he heard another chunk of snow fly up, too close.

Arthur turned to look over his shoulder and unholstered the Glock with his free hand. The sun behind him blinded him but he returned fire anyway, to let them know that he was serious. Maybe it would buy him some time.

The shooting stopped, but he realized that it wasn't because he had returned fire. They were just waiting for a clear shot at him. They knew that he couldn't bury himself in the snow and wait all day; and besides, they were only going to close in on him if he didn't keep moving forward.

He made it to the fence on his hands and knees, but had left a clearing in his wake that would make following him a breeze. His arm burned from holding both devices. His hands were numb and raw. A few more minutes in the snow like this and they wouldn't have to shoot him full of ketamine to slow him down.

He threw both devices as far as they could go, without revealing the dark of his suit in the snow. The smaller one, the mysterious one, went over the fence. The PASIV fell back down beside him.

_Fuck it._ It pissed him off to let go of it after having come this far, but he would never make it over the fence with the PASIV in his hands.

He counted to three, and then launched himself onto the chain-link fence, that was the height of two of him. He made it to the top and was vaulting himself over it when the dart hit him in the shoulder.

Arthur dropped to the other side of the fence, plucked the dart out as quickly as he could, and grabbed the machine. 

Ketamine. He could go about fifteen minutes before he fell, or so he had heard, anyway. Depending on the dose. 

Up ahead something that looked like a train graveyard loomed in the late afternoon sun. It was littered with torn-up tracks and old, broken down cargo-trains. A field full of potential weapons. Arthur ran towards it.

They came over the fence behind him, confident in his impending incapacitation. Arthur turned and fired his gun.

_Five_. This one a kill-shot.

_Six._ To the thigh of the second man.

He thought there were four of them. Maybe five. They went blurry, doubled.

Arthur turned, swayed, stumbled, and then righted himself and kept running.

He ducked into an open train-car and held on to the seat-backs for balance. He had maybe ten minutes left before he fell. There was another open door at the other end of the car. Arthur put the machine down on one of the seats and pulled out his phone.

His hand shook as he turned it on. "Eames," he said into it, and then heard the phone begin its auto-dial.

Three of his pursuers came cautiously into the car and Arthur aimed the Glock. They stopped as one and ducked behind the seats. Arthur fired anyway, hitting one old, torn up leather seat. The second shot went wild as his vision blurred and the world tilted.

Eames answered with a "Yes?" that sounded foggy, like it was coming through a blanket. 

Arthur was about to say his name, at least get that much out, when someone grabbed him from behind. He was instantly disarmed, spun around against a shattered window of the train car, and held by the throat. He struggled to hold on to the phone, but the man (whose face he could hardly see by now) plucked it out of his fingers.

Arthur jerked his knee up as hard as it would go into the man's crotch. The man released his throat and doubled over. Arthur kicked him in the chin and heard the sound of teeth breaking.

_Seven._

He stumbled over the unconscious man, scrambling for his phone, the Glock, the device. He couldn't find any of them in his darkening vision, by the dim light that filtered in through dirty windows. He was empty-handed. His blood pressure plummeted, he could actually feel it, like a trap-door letting his blood out. His ears rang and hummed; the world faded around the edges.

The three men who had been crouching behind the seats converged on him. Arthur vaguely heard a crunch that he assumed was one of them stepping on his phone. He cast around for his gun, caught sight of it on the floor, and lurched for it. One of the men kicked it away.

He pulled himself to his hands and knees and then scrambled to his feet, but by now he knew he wasn't getting much farther. If he could find a way to take out the last three, he could call for help on one of their phones, at least. Or he could wait it out and hopefully not freeze to death until the sedative wore off. Either way, it didn't look too hopeful. He did wonder why they hadn't killed him yet, and instead of reassuring him, this made him worry more. If they wanted him alive, they probably wanted something from him – and people like this had creative ways of getting what they wanted.

He was at the farthest door of the train when one of them grabbed his arm and jerked him backwards. He lost his balance and heard a bright *pop*. With it came a dull blur of pain as his shoulder was dislocated.

He did see someone's face close to his, though, and he rammed his head forward, smashing the guy's nose with his forehead. He felt the other man's blood run down his face, as hot sparks of pain shot through his head.

He fell again, before he could get out the door. Face-down, he looked under the seats for something, anything he could use as a last-resort weapon. He saw something dark and sharp, and grabbed for it. His hands were trembling and felt too weak to wield anything, but this was a rusty railroad spike and at least it was something.

Arthur pulled himself toward the man he'd just head-butted, raised the spike and brought it down onto the man's calf. It didn't go all the way through, but it did enough. The man screamed, curled in agony, gripping his leg.

_Eight._

The last two were keeping their distance from him, which gratified him in a totally useless way. He was completely unarmed, drugged to stupidity, and they were still afraid of him.

The device, the one he had fought so hard to hold onto, had fallen to the ground in the scuffle. Arthur reached for it, grabbed it by one of the wires trailing from it, and pulled it closer.

"He thinks he can still steal it," one of the men said. His voice sounded distant and slow.

Arthur let his eyes close.

"Careful, he's not out yet. Takes longer than that."

"I dosed him for estimated body weight but I thought he'd be bigger. He should be out already."

It was strange hearing them discuss him in such impassive terms while he was lying drugged on the floor of an abandoned train-car.

"He still took out, what, six of our guys? Just go slow."

_Eight,_ Arthur thought, _but who's counting?_

"Fucker stabbed me!" shouted the guy on the floor. "God, fucker stabbed me! Fuck that, _kill him._ "

"You know we can't yet."

_'Yet.'_ The word stuck in his head. And then he heard the phrase that would have made his skin go cold, if he wasn't already numb.

"He needs to stay alive to spread it to the others."

_'It,'_ he thought, _being whatever they did to me. To the whole team. And it spreads through dreamsharing, probably._

Someone prodded him in the ribs with a boot, or maybe the butt of the tranq gun. Arthur didn't move.

"Get the Glitch machine, go real slow."

_Glitch machine? Remember that._

He waited until he felt the man's fingers on his neck, checking for a pulse. He felt the man's breath on his face and then he surged up, rallying the last of his strength, and swung the metal machine. It bashed into the man's face, likely breaking his nose and some teeth.

_Nine._

Arthur tried to turn over and scramble away, but the last man, the tenth, ignored his fallen comrades and grabbed Arthur by the ankle, dragging him back.

"You are one annoying son of a bitch," the last man said.

Arthur laughed a little. And that was all he had left in him.

 

** ** ** **

He woke up too hot, and trying to take his clothes off. There was no other thought aside from one of primal creature-hood: cool down to survive, protect his vulnerable parts, try to turn over.

Voices shouted and people touched, prodded, lifted, turned him. He fought to save himself from them, swung with his fists and kicked as hard as he could.

All throughout he had no sense of who he was or even _why_ he was. One thought: Live.

But his assailants held him down, restrained him, pressed things to his face and body, and everything went black and smothering.

Some indeterminable time later, he opened his eyes again and looked at a white, tiled ceiling. 

The air was pleasantly warm this time and he was very tired. He ached and throbbed with pain everywhere, but lacked the motivation to get up and do anything about it. He knew what the steady beeping sound meant. He'd been in hospitals before.

He just didn't know when, or why.

Voices floated down the hall. He knew what this meant, too: they were monitoring him and knew he was awake.

Good. Now he would get answers.

A woman's tired face loomed over his, studying him.

"Hello there," she said.

"Hi," he tried to answer, but nothing came out and his throat hurt. On top of that, it felt like someone had taped his lips shut.

"Don't try to talk yet, all right? We'll talk later." She squeezed his hand and prodded at his fingers with something sharp. "Can you feel that?"

He nodded. She moved to the edge of the bed and stuck his foot with something.

"And that?"

He nodded again.

"Good," she said. "You should be fine. You're very lucky."

_That's good,_ he thought. 

And waited for the burgeoning flood of understanding.

It didn't come.

** ** ** **

Four days later, as he watched the television and saw news about storms in New York – which he knew he was in – it still didn't come. He'd been here a week.

He knew most of the staff in passing. Dr. Grisham, the small, sharp lady with the dark, tired eyes. The tall, dark nurse Emma, short blond nurse Lizzie, and the mousie brown haired nurse Darlene. And they had no idea who he was. 

"What would you like to be called?" Emma had asked him the day before, and he had inexplicably almost told her, _'Darling.'_ Instead he had just shrugged and asked her what sort of guy he looked like. 

"You look like some kind of special agent, like Jason Bourne," she laughed. "Can you imagine? But, the name of the train they found you on was _The Scout_. We should just call you Scout."

The name 'Scout' had gone around the hospital staff, and soon it was how they referred to him. It was supposed to be against protocol to use names for someone with general amnesia like he had, but they had to call him something. So Scout it was.

The police came to talk to him. Psychiatrists came and went, in the first week. Specialists. The hospital deemed him still too fragile to move and honestly, he was glad for it. The police made him feel too cautious, like he had something to hide. The way they looked at him, at his injuries. The questions they asked about why he thought he'd been attacked. He answered honestly that he didn't know. They asked if he could remember any detail at all. If it was possible that he had enemies. If he remembered any specific enemies. He said no.

He felt deep down that he did. The hospital staff were all very pleasant to "Scout." He, on the other hand, had the feeling that he was someone dangerous. He looked at himself, when he was allowed into the bathroom alone. His body was scarred, and thin, but powerful. He was aware of his own strength. He felt as if he could hurt people if he had to. 

So he played up the harmless image, to counteract what he thought was true. It helped. It kept people off his case.

And the truth was he was really terrified of himself. He must have done something very wrong, because no one was looking for him. No one had come to claim him.

** ** ** **

On the eighth day, Dr. Grisham came in to talk with him again when he was done eating (tomato soup and green beans. He'd discovered that he was a vegetarian, much to his surprise.) The TV was off and he was reading a book by Dean Koontz, who he wasn't sure he liked. None of it sounded familiar. He preferred reading over TV, though.

Dr. Grisham pulled up a chair next to his bed and he smiled at her, cheerful and harmless.

"How are you feeling today?" she asked.

"Good."

"Good. So, I've got clearance to ask you a few questions. The head-doctors from the clinic think you might be able to answer better if you didn't feel any pressure."

"Makes sense." He took a sip of orange juice with his good hand. The other one was still in a sling.

She reached into her pocket. "I have something of yours that I want you to look at."

"Okay." He was curious. She made it sound special.

Dr. Grisham held up a small red square that caught in the afternoon sunlight from his window.

Suddenly he was grabbing for it, immediately in a panic, almost vaulting himself out of the bed. He spilled the juice all over himself in his urgency to reach it. He didn't even know what it was yet, just that he needed it.

"Okay, okay Scout," Dr. Grisham said, opening her hand.

"That's not my name," he said, snatching the cube away from her. His breath came hard and fast as he clutched the red square.

Dr. Grisham looked alarmed and cautious. That look of apprehension was a dangerous thing for a man in his position and he couldn't afford the suspicion. He immediately regretted showing anything close to threatening behavior.

Instead of calming himself, he apologized profusely and pulled his knees up, trying to show more fear and confusion than aggression. He couldn't afford to scare them. Definitely couldn't afford to hurt anyone here. And absolutely had to make them think that he couldn't hurt them if he tried. He had no one else but them.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," he said. "This is mine. It means I'm awake."

"That's all right," she said, her voice soothing as if she were talking to something wild that might attack. "It's yours. A red die that I believe is loaded. You said your name wasn't Scout. Did something come to you?"

He thought. Struggled to remember. Tried to force the words to come as he opened his palm and stared at the die. " I can't, I can't remember, I don't know, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she said, taking a seat—slowly--on the edge of his bed. "Don't try to force it."

She was quiet as she took a towel from a nearby cart and started cleaning the spilled orange juice from his hospital gown.

"You said it meant that you were awake. Tell me. Do you think that you've had trouble distinguishing dreams from reality in the past?"

He looked at her, shocked into sudden clarity.

"I think I do," he whispered. "I don't know why that is." He rolled the die in his hand over and over. "If I can just look at it for a minute. I think I need you to turn away."

"It's interesting," she said, getting up and doing as he asked. "It always lands on three."

Her words struck fear into him, because somehow he knew that she wasn't supposed to know that. His throat went dry, his eyes felt too hot and this stranger, she knew his secret. He had no idea what it meant. He rolled the die onto the table next to his bed and watched it land on three. He knew it meant he was awake.

He just had no idea why.

** ** ** **

Days passed and he held onto the red die. The doctors clearly now thought him a mental patient with OCD and possibly delusions. 

Night times were the worst. He had night terrors every time, but on the ninth day, he woke screaming, in pain, and gushing blood onto the tiles. 

He had broken his nose careening into a wall and it took five people to get him back to his bed. He didn't let anyone near him until Dr. Grisham put the die in his hand (and now he knew it by weight, as if he'd never forgotten,) and he calmed immediately, and let them tape and bandage him up.

"REM sleep disorder," they diagnosed, and said it likely had something to do with his many other obvious disorders. 

During the day he smiled at everyone because he knew that they liked it. He was as pleasant as he could be, he allowed all the poking and prodding with good humor. He read books and read aloud to Emma when she was on her breaks. He liked her.

He even helped them get him into the restraining jacket at night, so that he wouldn't wander around and re-dislocate his shoulder or do himself worse damage.

The restraints horrified him, if he was being honest with them. But he wasn't being honest with them, not at all.

On the tenth night, Emma came around at ten PM with the jacket, like she usually did, and sat on the edge of the bed.

"How are you, Scout?"

"Bored," he said. 

"Well, you'll be out of here soon."

"Yeah?" he asked, trying not to make it a challenge. "You guys had enough of me? Sending me off?"

"No, not yet," she said, her smile regretful as she helped him slip his good arm into the sleeve. She must have known he hated it. "I just meant that someone'll be coming to look for you soon."

"You think so?"

"I do."

It was a trick to get his injured arm into the other sleeve, and more of a trick to fasten it. Because of the sling, both arms had to be fastened to one side of the bed, making it impossible for him to get comfortable.

Not that he slept anyway. He stayed awake as long as he could. Something blue and horrible pursued him in dreams. That's all he knew. Just that it was a blue thing, and his dreams had named it the Glitch.

And most nights he lay awake wondering about himself anyway, his mind unable to shut down.

Why hadn't anyone come for him? He suspected that he had no one. If he was the kind of man he thought he was, he probably was alone. Perhaps no one would ever come to tell him who he was (or what he had done,) and that void was more terrifying than the blue dreams, the Glitch.

"Who do you think will come for me?" he asked her, as she fastened the straps of the arms. "Get creative."

She wrinkled her nose and laughed. "Let's see. Hmm." She finished strapping his arms down and sat back a little, studying him. "I guess you must have a beautiful woman somewhere looking for you."

_A beautiful man_ , his mind corrected, stunning him again into clarity. Holy shit. He liked men. He liked women, too, but he also liked men, and maybe even one in particular. 

She must have seen the look on his face because she smiled, maybe a little ruefully. "Oh?" she asked. "Did I trigger a memory?"

He gave her his best smile, the one he knew slew them all. "No. Nothing like that. So, I've got some dame out looking for me? Does she look like you?"

She blushed, like he had meant for her to.

"What's my job?" he asked her. He knew she had to leave soon and go about the rest of her duties, but he hated the night, hated being left alone to struggle against sleep, and against the thing that pursued him into it.

"You do something fancy, that's for sure," she said. "Your clothes were really fine. I think you're Jason Bourne. Or! Actually, maybe you're an entertainer in Las Vegas." She nodded toward the die on the cart next to him. "You're a magician."

"I pull shit out of hats?"

"No, an illusionist. Like Criss Angel."

He barked out a loud laugh, trying to picture that. It amazed and frustrated him that he knew who Criss Angel was, but not his own name. "Okay, I'm a Las Vegas magician. That's cool, I guess."

"You probably don't live there though. You live in some mansion in the desert with horses. Or something."

"I don't think I have any horses."

"Cats?"

He thought about that one. "No," he answered honestly. "No cats. No dogs. No pets." He frowned, mystified at this. "I don't think I have …"

_Anything. I don't think I have anything._

He thought the words, but couldn't say them.

She sensed the change in him. "Someone will come for you, Scout."

He battered down a wave of self-pity. He also knew he wasn't the type to sit and wallow. _Get things done_ , was a phrase he associated with himself. But maybe he was just flattering himself.

She patted his good arm gently and got up to leave.

That night, the Glitch took the form of a wall of blue water, as great and inexorable as the hand of a god, bearing down on him. Blue, it was always blue.

He struggled so hard against the jacket that he tore it, and tore his shoulder free from the socket again.

After that, they tried sedatives. They worked for a few days, at least to keep him still during the night. They did nothing to quell the actual nightmares, which came on as strong and as hysteria-inducing as ever, although now he just couldn't move at all in the dreams.

And the dreams and excess sedatives in his blood left him so exhausted that he began to fall asleep during the daytime too, where the Glitch hunted him by sunlight. He wasn't getting better, he was getting worse.

He hadn't remembered anything. And no one was looking for him.

In February, at the end of two weeks, the hospital conceded defeat. His time was up, and he was deemed physically stable enough to be moved to a specialty center farther up north.

Emma was clearly fighting tears as she helped him into the restraint jacket on the final night.

"I guess this is the last time you're tying me up," he said, still smiling. He smiled through the whole thing every time. He smiled because he knew to his soul that he could kill everyone who was kind to him if he lost his mind enough. Could kill with his hands. He had no doubt. It was why he'd been left for dead. No one was looking for him and that was probably a blessing. 

Until the day that someone realized he was still alive and they came after him again. And this time he'd never see them coming.

"Come on now, Scout," Emma said. "When you're better, you just come on back and I'll tie you up again, huh?"

"Yeah, something to look forward to," he said. "I doubt the people at the new place will be quite so good at it." This he meant. He'd won over the people who worked here. He wasn't so sure about the psychs and sleep specialists. Once they started digging around in his head, they would find things that he didn't want them to find. He was certain of this.

"I'll see you off tomorrow," she said.

He nodded, still smiling. "Hey, I really appreciate it, Emma. Tell everyone, okay? You guys were great to me. Seriously, when I find out that I'm a mystery Las Vegas billionaire, I'll take you all on a cruise."

She patted his arm like she always did when she was done strapping him. And in a moment of unprofessionalism that he really liked her for, she leaned in and kissed him good night.

** ** ** **

**FEBRUARY**

"He was found inside a train, did you know that, Mr. Bishop?" Emma asked. "Well the train had a name, and it was Scout. So we just called him Scout. I can't believe he's _Arthur._ I wouldn't even have guessed that."

Eames liked her, this lady in her mid-thirties who had grown fond of Arthur – or Scout, to her. He was happy to think that someone had comforted him, even if Arthur had probably fought comfort all the way like a bastard.

But he also wished that everyone would stop prattling to him and they could walk faster to the room. 

"So what are you, his brother? You're not leaving with Scout until you're cleared, you know. I won't even let you. Even if the hospital was allowed to just discharge patients to strangers who said they knew them..."

"Next of kin," Dr. Grisham said, trying to end the conversation, for which Eames was grateful. 

"Scout is British? How did he lose his accent? That's not unheard of, you know."

"We're not brothers, we're married, darling." He said it off-hand, only knowing that it would gall Arthur to no end to learn he'd set it up like this, such a perfect con. Him and Arthur, married. God, but he would scowl.

"Oh," was Emma's soft reply. "I didn't realize."

"It's all right," he said, sparing her a small smile. "It's not the first thought most people have. You're right not to assume." And he saw in her face that she'd built a story around Arthur – attractive, mysterious, obviously dangerous yet vulnerable Arthur. Of course she'd fallen for him. Arthur had been a possibility, one that he had just taken from her.

He also saw that she was still happy that someone had finally come for him. He liked her better for it.

"This way," Dr. Grisham said, leading him past the upstairs nurse's station and down another endless hall.

The Dr. pushed the door open first, and Eames fought the urge to shove her aside. When he finally was able to look into the room, he quelled his urge to go bursting in. Arthur was asleep.

The sight of him, battered and strapped to a hospital bed, briefly rooted him to the spot. He'd seen him in much rougher shape, but somehow the strip of tape across his nose and the accompanying black eyes made it worse.

Emma saw him staring. "He ran into the wall," she said. "Face-first, really banged himself up. Hut he was okay; just a fracture. That's why..." She waved her hand vaguely toward the room, as if indicating the jacket with the straps.

His focus narrowed to the IV line in Arthur's hand and then he was rushing into the room, thinking, _darling, darling_ and maybe saying it, too.

Now he would wake Arthur, get him out of here, and allow him to quit with the charade of amnesia. The night-terrors he honestly did not understand but Arthur was a lucid dreamer, and once reunited with the PASIV he'd be fine. Eames was certain. 

He liked Arthur, his occasional business partner and occasional shag. Liked him and was irritated by him in turns, but mostly enjoyed him these days. He'd seen him wrecked and bloody and torn, he'd seen him survive all kinds of mad situations and come out swinging. He'd seen him with bones broken and he'd even watched him struggle with his work in the past, with dreams. Arthur had seen him at his weakest, as well. It was what made them a safe team. Even if they only saw each other a few times a year, they'd been through it together; Arthur was his number one oppo. There was no one like him. Eames had prepared himself to find Arthur a mess, but he'd thought it couldn't be any worse than watching Arthur dodge bullets and even take one or two.

He had never seen him strapped to a hospital bed. 

"Can I wake him?" he asked, forgoing the chair and sitting instead on the edge of the bed.

"Go ahead," Dr. Grisham said. "But I have to stand by, in case he reacts badly."

Eames just nodded and set about undoing the arms of the jacket. That thing wasn't staying on. Arthur wasn't waking up with it to see him staring down at him. Never in a million years. He moved Arthur's arms to a more natural position. Then he placed his palm against the side of Arthur's face.

Arthur looked frustrated in his sleep, as if he were concentrating on something. Eames used his thumb to smooth away the frown between his eyebrows. It was his perpetual scowl, but he didn't like it just then – it looked too worried. Arthur looked too young to be wearing it. His hair had grown out some, and curled at the ends like it did when he didn't bother styling it back for work. He dragged his fingers through the curls, the way he always did whether Arthur approved or not. 

_Darling._ Arthur always sneered at the endearment when he was awake, or rolled his eyes like Eames was being a child. Eames always used it to get him to react in front of others, because he did it so hilariously. But looking at him with his seams torn like this, he said it and meant it. He touched Arthur's face the way he would never be allowed to in front of others, and he waited for him to wake up and swat his hand away like always. He waited for Arthur to say "quit it" or "god, Eames, fuck off, I'm tired."

Instead, Arthur turned groggily into the caress and when his eyes finally rolled open, it wasn't annoyance, arrogance, condescension or the usual hooded look of danger he saw there. 

It was just a moment of blank confusion. Dread pooled in his stomach; Arthur always came awake easily, and completely aware.

"Arthur?" he tried.

The confusion turned to focus, and then plain, wide-eyed wonder, the likes of which Eames had never seen in him, not in all the years he'd known him.

Arthur practically launched himself upright and threw his good arm around Eames's neck, pressing his face against his shoulder, breathing in hitching gasps. 

Eames awkwardly slung an arm around his back and pulled him close, soothing his back with his hand. They were supposed to be married, after all, a con that was meant to annoy Arthur when he finally found him. He had to make a good show of it. But he had never coddled Arthur like this before, outside of in jest. It felt wrong.

"You came for me," Arthur said against his neck. 

"Of course," Eames said, playing along. Maybe Arthur was better at this than he was, or was playing some game with these people that Eames wasn't clued in on yet. "Of course I did, darling." And then, close to his ear, whispering so that no one else could hear: "Sorry it took so long to locate you. You are a bastard to find."

Arthur pulled away, and yes, that was definitely dampness that Eames felt on his shoulder. He was stunned to see that Arthur's eyes were wet and he was swiping at them with the back of his hand, the one that was still in a sling.

"Get me out of here," Arthur whispered so that none of the others could hear. "I'm pretty sure people are still after me but I don't know who they are or why they want me."

He didn't sound conspiratorial or as if he were even playing along with whatever undercover thing he had going on. He just sounded confused. "Arthur?" Eames whispered back. "What's going on?"

"Arthur," Arthur repeated, as if testing the name. "That's me." And then: "I know you. Fuck, I _know_ I know you."

Eames sat, stunned and speechless, as Arthur pulled away and scrambled for something on the cart next to his bed. When he turned back around, he was holding the loaded die up to the light.

"What is this?" he asked. "Who are you, and what _is_ this?"

With a shaking hand, Eames reached into his own pocket. He shielded them from the vision of the others with his back as he drew out the poker chip and held it up for Arthur to see. "Totem, Arthur," he whispered. "What the fuck."

Instead of answering, Arthur just folded the die into his hand, as if he would crush it, and pressed his face against Eames's shoulder again, his free hand practically clawing at his shirt in the back. He was trembling as if he would shatter to pieces, and that was not something he was faking for the benefit of the others in the doorway. The entire bed-frame shook with him.

Finally truly afraid, Eames put both arms around him and held him, like he was holding the pieces together. "Arthur," he whispered. "What's happened to you?"


	2. Chapter 2

Arthur had nothing to pack. The suit he'd come in with was bagged and tagged with his name, and he'd look at it whenever he got to wherever he was going. The man who called himself Luke Bishop had left with a promise to return when he got clearance to have him released. He'd said that he would get all of his papers in order.

Emma brought him lunch one last time. She timed it to her break and sat with him, obviously dying to ask him questions. Thing was, he still had no answers.

"You really are Jason Bourne," she said.

"I guess I am," he said, picking at a cheese sandwich. 

"You could blow the room up with a toaster."

He smiled, genial and harmless, with what he hoped was the right amount of mischief. "Maybe."

"And Mr. Bishop is your, your husband then." It wasn't phrased like a question, but it still felt like one.

He gave it some thought. He definitely knew him. There was something about the way his body reacted that felt familiar. It felt like security, it felt a bit like intimacy, but it didn't feel like what he thought marriage would feel like. He could almost swear that he didn't actually see the other man all that often. There was some distance there that didn't feel like amnesia. In fact, he almost remembered the distance.

But he couldn't remember anything else, so it was useless to try to force it to come back.

"He's the only thing I recognize," he said. "Yeah, it feels like I should go with him. I'll get some answers."

"It'll be a big news story," she said.

He choked on his orange juice and coughed into a napkin. "News?" he said, when he could breathe again.

"Well, yeah. You made the news last week. We thought that was how he found you."

Now he had to get away, and before anyone wanted a follow-up story. He had no idea what to expect, but his sense for danger was burning bright.

"Probably a bad idea," Emma said. "You being military and that kind of thing. No one knew."

"My thoughts exactly."

"Listen, Scout. I know you're gonna disappear. But if something goes wrong..." She looked around the room, awkward and unsure, anywhere but at him. Then she drew a card out of her pocket. "If this is some kind of set-up? Will you just call please? The hospital's number is on here too. No cops will be involved. Just, you know. If it goes wrong."

He took the card, smiling. She had more of a clue about his identity than he apparently did. Still, how little she knew of him. He felt to his core that being subdued like he had been was a one-time deal. He had likely been ambushed, and it would never happen again if he could help it.

"Thanks," he said.

A moment later, the man who called himself Luke Bishop (and he felt that was a lie, he didn't know how,) returned with a folder, a shopping bag, and Dr. Grisham.

For a few seconds, they just stared at each other. He searched around in his memory for the face he was looking at, and he found it, somewhere. The patrician nose, that's what it was. And the grey eyes, the softness in them that looked false, the steel behind the charade - those were things he knew.

"I, err, brought you some clothes, Arthur," he said, holding up the bag. "And you've been cleared for release to the care of your primary." He indicated the folder in his other hand.

 _Arthur._ The way he said it sounded correct, as if it belonged there in his mouth. It sounded familiar. 

"Thanks," Arthur said, still rolling the name around in his head, trying to get used to it again. He swung his legs out of the bed and gestured for him to bring the clothes over to him.

The other man did, and sat awkwardly on the bed beside him as he looked into the shopping bag. Jeans, button down shirts, a sweater vest, socks, underclothes, as well as various items like soap, shampoo, toothpaste and a toothbrush in a smaller bag inside. This guy thought around corners. He liked that. The clothes looked casual as compared to the one he'd been wearing when they brought him in, but that also felt correct.

"You look better," the man said.

"I feel a little better, now that I know I don't have to get shipped off to who knows where."

He suddenly sensed that this guy wanted to kiss him, and for a second he could only stare at his lips, which he had to admit were lovely. But he didn't want that to happen in front of the others. So he pulled the stupid gown closed, took the bag, and headed into the bathroom.

Once inside, he stripped out of the hateful gown—finally--and took another look at himself. He honestly did look familiar to himself, too. He knew every scar; knew the texture, and the lingering tingle of the newer ones. He just had no idea where they had come from. He tried to relax and dress himself as he thought he normally would, hoping for some insight into his own habits. He ripped the tags off with his teeth and cleared his mind. Socks first, it felt like.

 _Arthur Bishop. Arthur Bishop,_ he repeated mentally, as he dressed. He could hear the murmuring voices of the people outside the door. Emma, Dr. Grisham, the man who called himself Luke, who called himself his husband, but he knew absolutely that this was a lie. And something about it pissed him off, too.

After he was dressed, he found himself running his hands through his hair as if trying to keep it back. When he realized he was doing it, he stopped and gave it some thought. He probably needed a haircut. Then he brushed his teeth, got himself in order, and came out of the bathroom.

He felt, for the first time in weeks, like someone named Arthur.

** ** ** **

Eames watched as the staff said their goodbyes to Arthur. Dr. Grisham wanted followups, though her face said she knew she wasn't going to get them. Military special ops men didn't make the news and then come back to keep revealing their identities and whereabouts. He handed over all the forged documents for Arthur's release and subsequent treatment, waited outside while he said goodbye to the nurse who had become his friend, and then took him the hell out of there.

Eames was on the verge of being nervous about something and he didn't know what, or why. Surely Arthur would either give up this game, or if he did have some memory loss, it would return as soon as they started talking. It wasn't unheard of, among dreamwalkers.

He handed Arthur the winter coat he'd picked up for him and then led him to the stolen car outside.

Arthur paused and looked around, his hands in his pockets. "Smells like New York," he said. He refused to look at Eames.

"'Tis," Eames said. "And we've got to lie low. I just found out that you made the news. Whoever attacked you will still be looking."

Arthur nodded. Eames got tired of waiting and nudged him toward the car.

"We have a new car?" Arthur said, as he slid carefully into the passenger seat. It took him a second to buckle himself in, with one arm in a sling. His hands were shaking. Eames didn't want to help him because he refused to believe that Arthur needed any further help.

He got behind the wheel, which he fucking hated. Driving in the USA was one thing, but driving in New York was an entirely different beast. He wished he could allow Arthur to drive, but whatever was going on inside his head was not conducive to safety. And this pissed Eames off. 

"We usually do have a new car, Arthur, because I steal one every time I come here."

Arthur just nodded, not shocked by this. "And my release documents? My 'primary care?'"

"All lies." He started the car.

"Eames, you're a forger."

"And you just remembered my name." He turned and smiled before pulling out of the parking spot. He wanted to be encouraging, but these were things that shouldn't even be surprising.

He didn't miss the look of revelation on Arthur's face. Fuck, he was nowhere near remembering, and none of this was a game. Eames had halfway held onto the hope that once out of the hospital, Arthur would drop the amnesia charade. But he was still distant, cautious, a stranger. 

"Eames," Arthur repeated. "Eames, Eames."

"Yes, Arthur."

"We're not married."

"No, of course not. I hadn't counted on you forgetting everything in your carefully catalogued mind. I counted on finding you alive, annoyed, and on further irritating you by convincing others that we were."

"Oh." He gave that some thought, and looked strangely guilty about this. "But we have sex, I think."

"Occasionally."

Arthur's free hand lay still in his lap, the other still in the sling. He stared out the window. "What else do we do? I know I've got some training, probably military. But that's not the whole thing. My entire _life..._ What am I? Not special ops."

"Dreamsharing," Eames said, hoping with everything he had that the word would fill in the first essential gap. "And once we find a place to settle, we call Cobb and ask him if he's ever..."

"Cobb," Arthur whispered. "Cobb. _Mal._ Call Mal. Mal!" He pounded his fist into his lap. "Who is she? Who is Mal?" He turned to Eames, agitated, his eyes bright. 

"Mal's dead, Arthur." He felt so weary, having to go through this Mal thing again. "God. Please just remember," he added, almost under his breath.

"I'm trying. I'll keep trying."

They drove in silence, as Eames headed for a hotel that he had booked for them. He could practically hear Arthur struggling in his own mind. And then Arthur banged on the window, scaring the shit out of him and making him nearly sideswipe a taxi-cab.

"Jesus, Arthur! What?"

"I know where we are."

"Well you live in New York for fucksake."

"I know where my apartment is, _fuck_ yes, I know how to get there."

"Then by all means, direct me." His hands were tight on the wheel, his shoulders hurt, his teeth were clenched and he was angry about this whole thing. He didn't know why exactly, but maybe it was the absence of the Arthur that he knew, and this stranger in his car. Yet the silence that descended after his clipped and impatient speech was somehow worse than all of those things combined. His Arthur would have told him to watch his fucking mouth. This man in the car just took a sharp breath and turned back to the window. Eames felt a little sick.

"Arthur, I'm--"

"Look, Eames," Arthur said. "I'm sorry I don't remember anything. I need some time. If you don't have time, tell me now. If we're on a job together and I'm..."

"Arthur, don't."

"Let me finish. If we're working on something, and I'm fucking this up, then just bring me to my apartment and let me figure things out. I can take care of myself. I've probably got phone numbers around of people I can call, if I have to." The words came out as if Arthur thought this was the farthest thing from the truth. 

"We're not working," Eames said. "Well, I'm not. You were. We can find answers once we figure out what it was you were doing."

"Who I fucked over."

"Possibly," Eames conceded. "But unlikely. You're pretty solid, Arthur. You don't make a lot of mistakes. And I am very, very sorry for acting like an asshole. I'm afraid for you, and I turned ridiculous."

"Right," Arthur said.

"So."

"No, I mean take the next right."

"Ah." Eames turned right, heading toward the Bronx. He had no idea where Arthur lived, but he was starting to second-guess his sudden knowledge of his own apartment. He would never have thought of the Bronx, for Arthur.

Yet Arthur quite steadily supplied him with directions, until they were circling around a park in an upscale and quiet part of the town. It was an unassuming sort of posh neighborhood, hidden and unlikely.

It was sundown by the time they reached a road that made Arthur agitated, bright-eyed again. He visibly restrained himself from banging on the window once more. "Hey, it's here. This is my building. I _live_ here." He sounded surprised by this revelation.

There were some parking spaces available across from the brownstone, and the roads had been cleared of snow. Arthur got out of the car first, eagerly. Just as quickly, his legs buckled and he had to lean back against the car with his eyes closed.

Eames came around to the other side quickly. "All right?" he said, cautiously laying a hand on his shoulder.

Arthur nodded. "Tired. That's all."

"Your sleeping troubles." That concerned him perhaps more than the memory loss.

"Yeah."

"I'm sure they'll clear up once you're settled. Although to be honest, we can't stay here, I think. Since you made the news, someone around here is bound to recognize you. Whoever came after you the first time..."

"No one came for me," he said. "I don't think anyone here knows me. It was two and a half weeks, Eames. And no one came. Until you did."

A streetlight flared to life over them as Arthur grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him hard up against his body. He had lost weight, his lips were dry and cracked, his hands shaking. 

"Not now," Eames said, gently pulling away.

"Sorry," Arthur mumbled, and looked down, to the side, over his shoulder, anywhere. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"That's all right. Come on, let's get you inside." Eames went to the boot of the car and pulled out his suitcase, his traveling work-station that he kept in what could pass for an art portfolio, and the PASIV. He'd bought more clothing for Arthur, but now that they were at Arthur's place, he hardly needed it.

Arthur was already up at the front door when Eames came up behind him. "You don't even have your key, how are you..."

Arthur looked over the names on the roster, and at the keypad below.

"Which name is mine?" he asked.

"Arceneau. Do you remember the..."

But Arthur was already punching in a series of numbers, and then the door clicked open. Eames raised an eyebrow.

"You remember directions, addresses, numbers, that sort of thing. What's gone from you is personal. Your name, your lifestyle, your identity. I wonder why that is."

There was a watchman at a desk, watching a small television with his feet propped up. Arthur motioned for Eames to wait in the entrance while he went to the window.

"Hey," Arthur said, casual and with a smile more charming than any he usually used. "Uhh."

"Oh jeez, Mr. uhh, welcome home. Haven't seen you in months. What happened? You all right? Or..."

Clearly they were not even on a last name basis. Eames weighed this information carefully. People in Arthur's building knew him by sight, but still had no idea who he was. It was no wonder no one had noticed when he disappeared.

Arthur indicated the bandage across his nose. "Got mugged, lost everything. Every last thing. Keys, the works. Can you help me?"

"Sure, sure. Let's see. Which apartment now?"

"Three-eighteen."

The guard cast around for a key-card. Then he punched something into a computer and swiped the card. "There you go. Man, I'm sorry about what happened."

"Yeah, it's all right," Arthur said. "I just went to stay with family for a while after that. It's all good now."

"Well, be careful," the watchman said, handing Arthur the key-card. "Welcome back."

"Thanks," Arthur said, smiling.

Once in the elevator, Eames felt Arthur's eyes on him, hot and dark as they looked him up and down. He wanted something, his entire demeanor changed. But Eames couldn't read this stranger. 

"What's that?" Arthur asked suddenly, nodding toward the PASIV.

He took a breath, one that shook in his chest. "It's a PASIV device, Arthur. Your _work._ It's more than your work, it's what you do, it's what you've done for years, your livelihood, your passion."

"I don't want it." His voice was quiet, firm. "I don't want to use that thing. I don't even want to see it."

"Arthur," Eames said, desperate to change this, any of it. "It will help you remember."

"I remember enough, and I know that that's the thing that fucked me up."

"Can we talk about this when we're settled?" Eames asked.

Arthur nodded curtly.

But once they were inside his door and Eames had put everything down, there was no talking. Arthur crowded him against the wall and shoved his hands under Eames's coat again, tugging at his shirt. He kissed him with lips that were dry and feverish, his eyes closing as if he was in pain.

Normally, given any chance, Eames would take an emotionally stripped Arthur and physically strip him as well. This apartment must have a bed in it somewhere or at least a flat surface nearby, and Arthur was almost begging for it. _No one else claimed me_ , was what Eames's libido heard. _I must belong to you._

He pulled away before Arthur could really get to work on him. 

"You don't even know who I am," Eames said. "Anything I do now will be taking advantage."

Arthur frowned. "I feel like that would be okay," he said, impatient.

"It wouldn't. You have zero defenses right now."

"I just don't want you to leave yet," Arthur said. "I mean, not only that. That's not why I was..." he stopped, annoyed with himself. "I wasn't trying to do anything like seduce you into staying. I just think that this is something we do."

"It is," Eames said. "And I seduced you years ago."

"Pretty sure that's bullshit," Arthur laughed, still gripping onto his jacket. "I actually remember putting my hand down your pants."

"You've been fooling yourself over this for years, Arthur," Eames said, happy that at least something was returning. "This is a good sign."

"Then what's wrong? I'm cold. I'm _hot_. I don't want to sleep. I want some real food and I want to fuck you. Please. _Please._ "

"Don't," Eames said, but it was of no use, as was usually the case when Arthur asked him for something. He kissed him helplessly, up against the wall. He felt like he was the one suddenly stripped bare and defenseless. At the end of the day, Arthur could usually have whatever he wanted from him.

 

** ** ** **

Eames finished the night as he had least expected to.

He might have counted on Arthur remembering a handful of things about himself, about them. He might have expected falling into bed with him, though it had seemed unlikely, earlier. He had wound up as an outlet for Arthur's frustration, which was really nothing too new. Arthur's desperation – that was new, and set an uncomfortable edge to the entire thing. Arthur, braced over him on his good arm, frantic and a little lost, repeating his name as if he had just understood it for the first time.

Arthur had gotten out of the bed eventually. He found a box of organic spinach ravioli in the fridge. Eames cooked it and helped Arthur open a jar of sauce, and they ate together at the kitchen table. Then Arthur went in for a shower.

Eames looked around the apartment. It was spare, spacious, with wood floors, small rooms and high ceilings. An acoustic guitar sat on a stand in one corner, covered in dust. Arthur had a stack of neatly arranged video games next to some systems, like the Wii, he supposed, and maybe a Playstation, he couldn't tell. Hanging above his collection of DVDs was a re-creation of Aivazovsky's _Ninth Wave._ With a sudden jolt, Eames recognized his own brush strokes. He had not given this print to Arthur, and had no idea how the sneaky bastard had even come by his work.

Arthur came out of the bathroom looking waterlogged and unsure of himself in his own home. Eames didn't bother asking him if he felt any better.

"You play," he said to Arthur, nodding toward the guitar. "I didn't know that."

"I didn't either," Arthur said with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

Eames sat on the long sofa. "Come and sit. Maybe you'll relax enough to fall asleep."

Arthur did, for about fifteen minutes. The second he started to nod off, he got up again. Eames watched him as he wandered around his apartment, first with purpose, and then later, aimlessly. He checked his laptop, his cell phone. Then the wandering turned into pacing. He made coffee. Looked out the window. Paced again.

At 2 AM, Eames pulled him back into the bedroom, stripped him of his shirt, and physically put him into the bed. He turned him face-down, the way Arthur always liked to sleep, and pressed against his back, one arm around his narrow waist and his nose in Arthur's curls.

"Please go to sleep," he said. 

"I don't want to."

Eames had expected that reply, too. He leaned away a little and stroked his hand down Arthur's back, again and again. "If something happens, at least I'll be here, yeah? You won't be alone. And it's nothing I haven't seen before, Arthur. Shall I tell you of our adventures together?"

Arthur laughed into the pillow. "I guess we've been through some pretty bad shit."

"We have. Much of it having to do with dreams."

His back tensed beneath Eames's hand. "I don't want to talk about dreams right now."

"Then I won't. I'll just tell you of our legendary exploits." 

Eames didn't need any sort of bright, rhythmic gleaming light or hokey swinging stop-watch to attempt this trick. It was one of the oldest techniques he used and it pre-dated Somnacin by hundreds of years. He dropped his voice to a steady drone, and matched the stroking of his hand to the seconds ticking by on the clock, first one stroke every two seconds. Then every four seconds. Six, and so on, slower and slower as he spoke.

"We hid behind a dumpster in an alley in Munich for seven hours, one time. The reek was terrible because it was behind a bar, but it was dark and deserted. Dull and tedious. So boring we fell asleep a few times."

"That doesn't sound like an exciting exploit, Eames," Arthur said into the pillow.

"No, I suppose not. But it did keep us safe from those who were chasing us, you see."

"We get chased a lot?"

"Hush. Let me tell you. Yes, we do. But we always come out ahead." He slowed his hand on Arthur's back, breathed in time with him. "We've been pursued all over the world for different sorts of crimes, most usually of a gentlemanly nature. Or so I like to think. I'm a forger, as you know. You're a point man, made of steel and patience, Arthur. We didn't always work together, you know. At some times, we worked opposite each other. For many years, actually. We were on rival teams a few times."

"When did we start fucking?" Arthur sounded slurred, tired.

"Around the time we met, even when we were working against each other."

"I made the first move."

"You like to think so," Eames said, smiling into Arthur's hair. "I had planned it from the beginning though, at least since I saw you work. Not since I saw you, but since I saw you _work_ , you understand. At first glance I thought you were a pretty, posh little thing and quite possibly too young to be doing any of the things I had in mind. Awkward, with freckles, ears too big for your head, terrible hair and an undeserved sense of entitlement. But pretty." 

"So you were an asshole." 

Eames ignored him indulgently, because he sounded not only comfortable, but exactly like Arthur. "But seeing you at work made you into something else. You turn into something else when you work. Something beautiful, if a person likes that sort of thing." He lowered his voice to a near-whisper, lightened the pressure of his hand across Arthur's back. "Because you're stronger than you look, which is saying something. And every time I've thought you've reached the limits of your strength, you reach down a little more. It's what makes you a good partner and a safe wager on any job. It's what puts you in high demand and allows you to set the terms, which you always do. That's what you are, Arthur, you're safe."

It was a little like inception, Eames thought, only without dreamsharing, without the PASIV, and really without sleep. He repeated this idea in different ways: _You're safe, you're in control,_ until, as he had expected, Arthur dropped off to sleep.

What he didn't expect came about a half an hour later, when Arthur, in hysterics and seemingly still asleep, abruptly stopped breathing.

** ** ** **

It had taken Arthur a few tries to remember how to adjust the water in his shower. The smell of his own soap and shampoo did nothing to bring his identity back. His clothes, when he was finished showering, felt alien on his skin. The man he saw in the mirror looked like a half-drowned cat, scared witless and looking for a place to hide. He hurried out of the bathroom and looked at his laptop, but couldn't remember the password for the important files, for anything he would need to know about what had led up to his being attacked and left for dead, void of memories. The password must be something personal to him, then. He didn't mention this to Eames, even though he had just fucked the man soundly against his own foreign bed. It felt normal and new all at once. He wondered if it always felt like that.

He checked his cell phone and noticed that none of the numbers had any names attached to them. God, what kind of man was he, to keep such secrets?

Eames told him to sit on the couch, and for a few minutes, he did. It was warm, comfortable and for the first time since coming home, he actually _felt_ at home. 

The first few stirrings of a dream tugged on his consciousness and something squirmed around in his mind, coiling, constricting and then threatening to burst wide open and take his brains with it. For a few seconds he felt like he was drowning, and then he got up and walked around his apartment again.

Eventually Eames had enough of his wandering and put him into his own bed, where he started babbling to him about what they had done together. He pet him like a cat, which made him feel first annoyed and coddled, and then vaguely aroused until he realized that his intention wasn't to have another round with him at all, but to make him go to sleep.

He knew he couldn't put it off forever. It wasn't possible to never sleep again. He _had_ slept, in the hospital. It was smothering and terrifying, and painful when he'd broken his stupid nose, and he felt like an idiot waking up screaming and flailing, but he hadn't died.

And like Eames said, at least he was with someone he knew. Or, rather, someone who knew him.

This man, this Eames, he had a soft, gravelly, mellow voice that sounded dark and sweet, the way he thought dreams should be. Maybe if he kept talking, it wouldn't be so bad this time.

That's what Arthur told himself.

What did happen was that the voice eventually faded into the periphery of subconscious hearing. Part of him still understood this fundamental aspect of dreams, ingrained in him: the outside world lost most of its relevance in the face of dreams. 

He was unsurprised when he found himself standing in a swamp at night. Towering bamboo stretched to inconceivable heights around a marsh of sluggish, dark water. A high, small moon loomed above, peeking through the branches. The night was quiet, no frogs or crickets or other usual night sounds.

Arthur didn't know why he was there or which way to to. He searched for some significance, more than anything simply relieved that nothing terrible was happening. In the beginning, he knew it was a dream. He felt in control.

The deeper he went, the more he lost track of the idea of control, and then of control itself.

There was something on the other side of the swamp, and he had to get to it. He now had a purpose. Sloshing through the brackish water, soon he saw a bridge across a slow-moving, icy stream. The silhouette of a man stood against the moonlight, on top of the bridge. This man was broad, familiar, and Arthur knew that was where he was supposed to be going. To that man up there. It was important – no, imperative – that he get there in time. Because the water was freezing, and he had to stop this man from falling in.

He ran, though the icy mud slowed him down. The harder he struggled against it, the deeper the slush sucked his legs into it, until it was up to his thighs, then his hips. He tried clawing his way through it, now starting to lose his breath with the exertion.

_Don't let him fall. Just don't let him fall._

Then he heard the sound. 

_click click_

First only that: Just two dull clicking noises, like the *snick* of a dull pair of scissors. It was low and quiet, yet it stopped his struggling and stilled him.

_click click... click click..._

Tearing his eyes away from the silhouette of the man on the bridge, Arthur looked down in front of him.

In the marsh, sitting on the wet, muddy stump of a dead tree, was something that looked at first glance like some sort of marsh-life. A kind of crab-like creature, with legs and claws but no shell. It glinted strangely in the moonlight, in the way that organic things did not. It had a sharp beak the color of cobalt that parted to make a quiet hissing sound. A needle-like protrusion emerged from its beak, dripping fluid.

It was made of metal. It had as many as twelve legs, possibly more, and when it straightened the hinged joints, it stood about six inches high. Its back resembled some kind of silicone disk. It had eyes on flexible stalks, with little metal lids closed over them.

 _click click..._.

It snicked two sharp claws at him and opened the metal lids of its eyes. They were blue, and they glowed like two tiny stars. Arthur froze under its electric gaze.

_click click... click click... click click..._

Finally he turned as far as he could and looked behind him. Three more little, blue-eyed metal creatures crept on silent joints through the marsh behind him, lighter than water and quicker than air. They clicked their sharp metal claws at him.

Panting, Arthur turned again and started digging through the mud. But the marsh held him still as the one in front of him made its way toward the soaked hem of his shirt and pulled itself up, tearing the fabric. More of the creatures flanked him on either side. One of them leapt onto his arm and he cried out, trying to pull away.

He felt them crawling up his back, and one of them went under his shirt, its pin-prick legs digging into his skin for purchase.

He felt sick, numb wherever they touched him and then he understood that they weren't just sharp, they were toxic. They were meant to inject something. Their bright, blue eyes sought his, surrounding him with moving points of light from those flexing stalks. They clicked their claws, hissed through their beaks and he thought, _Glitch, glitch, glitch_ over and over again in his frenzy.

The one under his shirt made its way up to the back of his neck and Arthur pitched himself forward to get away from it, but it was too late. It sank its needle into the back of his neck, around the third vertebrae and he felt the paralysis instantly, locally. Within seconds, it traveled down his arms and chest.

His diaphragm seized up. He couldn't use his arms to push himself upright, he couldn't turn his head away from the water, and his lungs had gone dead.

All around, he heard them clicking and hissing. He could blink, he could move his eyes, but he couldn't shut out the blue glow that spread like lightning through his nervous system, shutting it down inch by inch.

He was suffocating slowly, yet dying quickly, and then he was falling, endlessly. Waiting to land. 

** ** ** **

Thirty minutes, that was all Arthur got after Eames began to drift off himself. He was behind him still, almost afraid to move. Sleep had never felt so fragile. He went on alert every time Arthur twitched, ready to either wake him, or even to restrain him if necessary. He hated the idea, but Arthur had wrenched his arm out of the socket and had managed to break his nose over the last two weeks. 

The normal, gentle movements of sleep gradually gave way to a few murmured phrases that Eames thought sounded more urgent than they should. Still, he didn't wake him. Arthur wasn't one to talk in his sleep (or really even move in his sleep) but obviously, much had changed.

When Arthur jerked in his arms, and his entire body went stiff, Eames just put a hand on his arm and waited. It could be normal sleep behavior, even if it wasn't normal for Arthur.

And then he started thrashing, truly thrashing, his arm coming up and catching Eames right in the mouth as he flipped himself over onto his back. Eames caught him by the wrist and tried just calling to him, his own heartbeat now racing because he could only imagine how this was going to escalate. Arthur's eyes were open, but he clearly saw nothing but what was inside his mind. 

Eames got up onto his knees for better leverage and grabbed both of Arthur's arms, as the rest of his body strained upwards, as if trying to break free of some invisible bond. Yet Arthur was strangely silent as he struggled. He didn't scream or call for help, he actually didn't make a sound, and that was somehow more frightening than anything else.

Eames let go of one of his arms to reach across him and turn on another light.

"You're all right, Arthur, you're all--" he began.

And then he saw that Arthur wasn't screaming or calling for help because Arthur wasn't even breathing. He was trying to, and there was terror in his eyes as he realized that he couldn't. 

With the sudden calm that always came to him in a crisis, Eames quickly considered his options. Arthur wasn't choking on anything, he wasn't cyanotic yet, and he probably didn't have any residual toxins in him. So he simply picked him up completely off the bed, and dropped him back down, hard.

Arthur hit the mattress with a gasp. His hands flew to his chest, to his throat, and his mouth as he stared at the ceiling, dragging in each breath.

"You're all right," Eames said, calm, and not yet touching him because he didn't know how he was going to react. "Arthur, you're awake. Come on, now."

"I couldn't get to you," Arthur said. "Eames, you're in trouble, you're going to die, I can't get there in time." He sat up, panting like an animal, his eyes glassy and wet. "You're on a bridge, you're going to die, I can't reach you, I'm paralyzed, I can't breathe and you're going to die."

"Arthur, I am _right here,_ " Eames insisted, grabbing him by the shoulder because now he didn't care if Arthur wanted to be touched or not. The words chilled him, not only because they were about him dying and Arthur apparently now remembered who he was, but because of how certain Arthur sounded. 

Arthur got to his knees facing Eames, looking earnestly afraid, and completely convinced of what he was saying. The words left him in a rush and he gripped Eames by the arms, his palms slick and cold. "Don't let them take you to the bridge, I won't get there in time, Eames, you're going to die, you're going to _die_." He started to hyperventilate and dropped his head against Eames's shoulder. 

"I'm not going to die, Arthur, Jesus Christ. Please, I am right here, _look at me._ " He tried to hold him, but now Eames felt shaky, too, and a little out of control. "Just breathe, all right? For now just do that for me. Please. We'll talk about this when you can do that."

Arthur nodded against him and tried to rein himself in. He slowed his breathing, purposefully, his hands gripping and releasing Eames's arms rhythmically. Sweat cooled on him and in a few seconds he was shivering. Eames pulled the sheet around his shoulders and let Arthur brace himself against him for a few more minutes.

Finally Arthur said, "I'm so fucking exhausted, Eames."

"I know you are." 

"I don't know what to do next. How do I get there in time?"

Eames smoothed his hair, which he knew he was only allowed to do under certain intimate circumstances without getting swatted away. This time, Arthur allowed it. "Well, we'll figure it out, won't we? Nothing has ever kept you down, Arthur. This won't, either. And if I find myself in trouble, you'll get there. You always have in the past."

Arthur nodded, then lifted his head and looked him in the eyes. Finally, he seemed present, if tired beyond reason.

"I think I need the PASIV. Not now though. I need to call Cobb, okay?"

So he remembered Cobb too, and he remembered the PASIV. Eames wondered if he actually remembered everything now, if somehow the last terror had cleared some sort of block from his mind. But he was afraid to push too hard. 

"I'll go down with you. In case you need help."

Arthur pulled away from him, his eyes blazing. _"No._ "

Eames sat back on his heels and leveled Arthur with his most determined stare. It rarely failed him. "There's nothing down there I haven't seen, Arthur. You know that."

"There is now," Arthur said, pulling the sheet tighter around his shoulders. "And it's not something I need to hide from you. It's just that." He pressed his mouth into a tight line, shook his head, as if considering how best to articulate it. "It's contagious. That's what it is."

"Not possible," Eames said. "We studied this. Dreamsharing doesn't lead to the sharing of whatever issue the mind has, not to a trained dreamer."

"Not this time. Eames, listen. I think we did an inception once, or did I dream that?"

"No, we did," Eames said. "The Fischer case. And it took. But inception has to be planted, Arthur. You would have to do it to me on purpose. I can't simply catch an idea from you."

"It's not an idea. What I meant by bringing that up was that this is different from what I think we did. This isn't inception, it's nothing like it. It's like a bug. It's a glitch." His eyes went distant. And for a moment, his eyelids fluttered. Eames reached for him, but Arthur waved his hands away. "Wait. Give me a second." His shoulders dropped, his mouth went slack and for a few moments, he seemed to be somewhere else. "There was a device. It wasn't the PASIV. I don't remember how it got into me. I was with some other people. When they caught up with me they called it a glitch device, or a machine, or something. It had wires." He curled his hands into fists and released a long breath. Then he looked back at Eames. "That's all I remember."

Eames stored those words away, the meager facts that Arthur had finally supplied. It might not be too hard to dig around the underworld of dreaming to learn more about this, unless it was something so new that only a small group of people still had the technology. He could make a few calls, but he could not go out searching for answers. It wouldn't do to leave Arthur like this. 

"Cobb might know," Eames said, tiredly scrubbing his face with the back of his hand. "It wouldn't be wrong to call him. He's lost all his senses for danger, but in his current position of research, and working with new dreamers... yes. He might have heard something. Much as I hate to admit it."

When he looked at Arthur, he saw that he was still kneeling, though his head was bowed and his eyes were closed. He was micro-sleeping, at least. It was something.

An hour later, and Eames wasn't sure how much longer he could stay awake. Arthur was wandering his apartment like a ghost again, randomly leaning against various surfaces, sleeping for a few seconds and then coming awake again. He tripped over a rug, almost knocked his guitar over. Went into the bathroom and then came out of it. Sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands.

Eames gave up trying to sleep and sat on the sofa in the living room, turning on the television. Some American animated show was on, something funny. Arthur heard the television come on from his seat in the kitchen and he picked his head up as if he'd forgotten that Eames was there. Then he came in and sat on the couch beside him.

Arthur's eyes looked glassy and empty. He stared at the screen as if he didn't recognize it.

"At least lie down," Eames said. "Get horizontal and take some of the strain off."

Arthur seemed inclined to just sit there staring, so Eames pushed him down onto his back, and lifted Arthur's legs up onto the sofa. He scooted aside to give him room, and pulled Arthur's feet into his lap. 

"Be there if I fall asleep," Arthur said.

Eames curled his hand around Arthur's narrow ankle and stroked his thumb along the inside of it. "Not going anywhere 'till we finish this," he said. "I've got nothing else lined up, and anyway, one doesn't leave his mates behind in a bad situation."

Arthur smiled at that and rubbed his palm over his forehead. Eames gave his ankle another reassuring squeeze. When Arthur looked at him again, it was from under lowered lashes and with blatant invitation.

Eames sighed, tired beyond measure and confused. "Why, Arthur?"

"Because I want to."

Trying to be obliging, but determined not to follow up all the way anyway, Eames gently moved Arthur's knees apart and settled between them, resting his head on Arthur's hip, placing his hand flat against his stomach. He inhaled slowly, the familiar scent of Arthur's body wash, and clothes, made a bit different by the fact that he was in his home, with his own belongings around him.

Arthur exhaled along with him, and tangled his fingers in Eames's hair. "Darling," he whispered.

Eames looked up at him, startled. Then he crawled up a bit higher so that he was looking down at Arthur. "Listen. We're not doing this again yet. Not now. All right? I'll stay, I'm not going anywhere, but this is not happening."

"Fair enough," Arthur said. He arched up with his hips.

Eames hissed in a breath. "Okay, keep doing that and I will move to the other end of the sofa. You are an awful person, with liquid nitrogen in your arteries pumped by a truly terrible heart. I don't know why I even put up with your demands sometimes, Arthur." He reached down between them, efficiently feeling Arthur up anyway. What he felt—or rather didn't feel--surprised him. "You don't even want this. What the fuck, Arthur?"

"I'm just tired," Arthur said. "Things aren't working right. But you can... I mean, you could still. Fuck me if you want, I mean. It would feel good. I want you to stay here, for now. Like this. Hold me down if I start to lose it."

Eames dropped his head against Arthur's neck, unable to look him in the face after that line of incoherent non-logic. "Arthur, at least listen to yourself. My dick is very confused right now but at least I realize that I'm not able to fuck you better. If you want, if you promise to behave, yeah? I'll stay right here and I will not let you get hurt again. But I'm not fucking you, only to have you fall asleep, wake up panicking and rip my balls off. Think a little, all right?"

"Unlikely that I could rip your balls off," Arthur snorted. He snaked both arms around Eames's shoulders and pulled him down close, as if Eames was the better option than the jacket they'd had him strapped into in hospital. "You outweigh me by about thirty pounds, I think, maybe more. Pretty sure you could tie me in a knot if it came down to it."

"True that we're usually evenly matched when we fight. But if you're fighting for your life and I'm holding back so as not to hurt you, you would destroy me. I don't know who did what to you, but I do know that it had to be at least a group of trained agents. Six, at the very least, and maybe more since they had to drug you. You're not a bruiser, but you snap bones very efficiently. Honestly, a shag with you half-awake and not even hard anyway? Not worth the risk. Sorry."

"Pussy," Arthur said.

"Primary school taunts." He braced on his elbow and ran his thumb across Arthur's lower lip. "How the mighty have fallen."

Arthur's eyes slid closed. "Grab my left arm if I wake up swinging," he murmured. "Careful of the right shoulder and watch out for my legs, I use them in a fight. Hold my head down because I'll break your nose with my forehead."

"Yes, quite. Now I'm very turned on. The idea of my face spurting blood as you struggle to murder me is always the quickest way to my heart."

"Just don't go anywhere," Arthur said, and drifted off for about thirty seconds. 

He woke with a gasp, stiffened for a moment, then looked up at Eames and fell back into a light sleep, this time for about two minutes.

This pattern went on for over an hour. At one point he came awake and made Eames promise once again not to go to the bridge.

** ** ** **


	3. Chapter 3

It was 3:45 AM when Arthur heard someone at the door. He cracked his eyes open and looked over Eames's shoulder. The sound was nothing more than the shuffle of feet, which might have been someone passing by if not for the way the shadow lingered under the space between the door and the floor.

Arthur came fully awake, instantly alert. He looked from the door to Eames, pushing him away and sitting up. The chill and emptiness from where Eames had been lying over him braced his nerves.

This was his element. This, he could do in his sleep. Had done in his sleep.

Arthur gestured toward the door and Eames nodded in acknowledgment. Arthur pressed a finger to his lips and patted his side, where the holster for his gun usually stayed. It wasn't there now. He made a questioning gesture that he knew Eames instantly understood.

_Do you have your gun with you?_

Eames nodded and tilted his chin toward where he had left his coat.

_Good._

Arthur pointed toward it and then toward the door. He was utterly silent as he slipped off the couch and crossed the room to turn the lights off. He left the television on though. He watched from the corner as Eames made his way across the room and grabbed his gun as quietly as he could.

A knock came at the door, startling them both. Arthur looked over to Eames, narrowing his eyes, curious. Break-ins didn't tend to knock, but it wasn't unheard of. He knew better than to check the peep-hole and risk a bullet to the head, and instead ducked down as he passed the door. He signaled Eames over to the left side of the door, where it opened, and he placed himself behind it. He then held up three fingers.

_On three._

Eames pressed back against the wall. Arthur reached across the door and quietly unlocked it. He felt calm, awake, and for the first time in weeks, sure that he was all right. Then he silently slid the latch across. The knock came again, a little louder. 

Arthur dropped into a crouch and counted down with his fingers. On three, he opened the door, effectively shielding himself behind it. While Eames, armed, waited in the shadow across from him.

From the light in the hallway, a tall figure emerged into Arthur's apartment. 

"Arthur?" a familiar voice asked. But what was familiarity to him? He only remembered one person.

He waited until the silhouette was all the way in before shutting the door behind him and springing into action. He had the man's arm pinned behind his back and his face pressed against the door in the next breath. Eames had the gun to the man's temple.

"Jesus, fuck, christ, Arthur!" the man spit out, trying to shake himself free.

Arthur just pressed him harder against the door, twisting his arm up higher. Lots of people knew his name, apparently.

"Arthur, it's Cobb," Eames said, lowering his gun and grabbing his wrist. "Let him go; it's all right."

 _Cobb, I had to call him. Cobb, my boss._ He took a quick breath. Oddly enough, the man he was pinning smelled familiar, and that was what made him let up. He wasn't used to relying on such a vague sense.

Arthur did as he was told without further question and backed off, hands raised but still wary. He needed to see his face. Cobb turned to face them in the near-dark, rattled and breathless.

"What the hell?" he said. His flustered voice was also familiar.

Eames turned the lights back on and breathed a sigh of relief. Arthur took it as his cue that he could lower his defense a little. Then he took a look at Cobb. Dark blond hair, blue eyes, frazzled. Someone's father. Mal's husband.

"Cobb, what are you doing here?" Eames asked.

"I came for... because I heard... Arthur, on the news." He finally looked at Arthur, took in the whole of him, like a scanner that caught every detail. "So it's true," he said. "You, uhh, you did lose your memory?"

Arthur just nodded.

"Well. You look like shit."

Another nod. He could only imagine how much worse he looked since the last time he'd checked a mirror.

Eames looked from one to the other and breathed out heavily and stretched, as if trying to ease the ache and adrenaline out of his muscles. "We were going to call you anyway, though at a more reasonable hour."

"I took the red-eye," Cobb said, still watching Arthur, as if he was the one who had lost his memory and not the other way around. "And then I just came right over."

"Well, that's just fine," Eames said. "Let's have a seat and straighten this out. I'll make tea, shall I?"

Finally, Cobb turned to Eames. For a second he seemed about to question his presence, then instantly thought better of it. "Yeah, thanks," Cobb finally said. He went past Arthur, into the kitchen. After a moment of staring, and trying to fit this person into his past, Arthur followed him. 

"How much do you know, or remember?" Cobb said to Arthur, forgoing any other pleasantries. He pulled out a chair and sat down, putting a PASIV on the floor beside him, and a small bag on the other side. 

Arthur wondered just how long he was staying, then he decided that it didn't matter, if there was any chance he could help. "Not a lot," he said. "My address. Eames. You, a little. Mal. If you're going to ask me how it happened, I couldn't tell you the details."

Eames opened and closed cupboards, searching around for cups and for tea. Arthur wished he knew where they were, or if he even had tea. He watched Eames for a moment or two, in the silence. Finally Eames took down a box of tea, decaf. There was no teapot that he could see, so he had to settle for a regular pot.

"Arthur was attacked and shot with ketamine first," Eames supplied, when Arthur had been silent for too long. "Or perhaps after they did whatever they did to him. No one is sure. Found in a train car, half frozen."

"That part was on the news," Cobb said. "The ketamine wasn't. That can interfere with various compounds, though I've never heard of amnesia being a complication. Still, it's not off the table. Go on."

Briefly, Eames recounted to Cobb the details of how and where Arthur had been found, and his stay at the hospital. Arthur listened with interest, feeling as if the story were about someone else. He watched Eames as he leaned against the counter, tapping his fingers against it as he spoke. He watched his eyes, which looked very light in the brightness of the kitchen. A kind of sea-grey, he thought. Pretty. Eames looked tired, as tired as he felt. It made Arthur wonder why he was standing there in this strange kitchen in the first place. What was Eames giving up to help him? And why? He drifted away for a second on a memory of earlier that night. Not the sex, and not Eames lying on top of him and refusing him sex. Instead, the memory was of Eames's hand on his ankle, firm and familiar. 

The his mind flashed to Eames standing on a bridge over an icy stream, or river. He tried to shake his head clear.

"I thought it a bad idea to have put him in a news story," Eames was saying. "Wish they hadn't. I found him through my own means. But whoever came after him now knows that he's still alive."

"That might have been the idea, leaving him alive," Cobb said. He turned to Arthur. "If they incepted you, they want you to do something."

"I thought so too, at first," Eames said. "But this doesn't act like an inception. Or if it is, it's a pointless and cruel one." Making do with what he had, he poured hot water from the pot and into three mugs with teabags in them. "They don't seem to want anything from him other than to render him unable to sleep."

Cobb looked up at him, and then at Arthur, surprised, concerned, and interested. He cared about Arthur, clearly, or he wouldn't be here. But this interested him intellectually, too. Arthur felt some danger in him, as if his drive for knowledge was deep and demanding, perhaps too much so. Cobb was like Icarus, maybe. At least that's where Arthur's mind went. He didn't question it too much.

While Arthur sat quietly waiting for his tea to cool, Eames spared no details in describing the nightmares, or night terrors, that were plaguing him. Again Arthur listened with a detached interest. Up until Eames said, "When he woke, he said it was like an error. No, not an error. A glitch of some kind..."

"It's a glitch," Arthur said, finally catching up with the conversation. The word triggered every memory of every dream he'd had since. The idea of it filled his brain, awake. He didn't have enough words to describe it. "That's what it is. It's something blue, a glitch, it's inside my head, the places where my brain is supposed to sleep, and it doesn't want me to, it's a physical thing, something I can feel and it's telling me something, that's the strangest part, I can't explain it but I don't think it's supposed to be telling me these things, I think it's doing something on its own and I can't control it, I know I'm not supposed to, but it's growing, it keeps spreading its fingers like it's picking through my brain, but it's also putting something there, and I can't sleep, I can't _sleep_ and I'm so fucking exhausted."

Cobb reached across the table and gripped Arthur's arm, getting his attention. 

Arthur finally looked up at him. He saw the history between them in his eyes. It rattled something free in his mind. "Where are the kids?" he asked.

Cobb smiled. "With their grandmere. That's what took me so long getting here, Arthur."

"Why did you come?" _You fought for your children. Why would you leave them for me?_

Cobb gripped his arm tighter. "Not once after Mal killed herself did you leave my side, Arthur. You could have run. You could have blamed me, or you could have just saved your own ass. At any time, you could have told me 'no' and gone on your way. You knew how much trouble I was in, and you went into it with me. I never had to ask you for anything. You just did it. I know I made a lot of mistakes." Here he glanced up at Eames, as if acknowledging something among the three of them. Arthur couldn't remember what. "But I'd never make the mistake of abandoning you when I found out you were in trouble."

Arthur smiled, as much as he could manage. 

"Especially when I think I can help you," Cobb said.

This, however, made Arthur wary. Help seemed so far off, more like an idea than a reality. "Go on."

"You said a word before; you both did. 'Glitch.' You told me what it looked like and a little of what it felt like. But what did you mean? And where did you hear that word?"

"I think it was something I heard someone say. But when I dream about it, that's what I call it. There was a machine. That's all I know."

Cobb was nodding. "I teach a class," he said. "I doubt you remember that about me right now, but that's what I'm doing, and working with sleep therapy. I still hear news from underground, whether I want to or not. Arthur, I'm going to say a name to you. Tell me if it jars anything."

"Okay," Arthur said, skeptical.

"Francis Allen."

 _Mr. Allen, my team, my fucking team..._ Arthur leapt up so quickly he almost threw his chair out from under him. Eames caught it before it could clatter to the floor. Arthur ignored it and started pacing the floor, fueled by the determination to remember. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He'd left something undone, something important.

"Is he alive?" he asked, even though he couldn't even put a face to the name.

"I think so," Cobb said. "I just heard that some man was in a coma, from dreaming. That was the name attached to him, that's the last I heard."

"Fuck," Arthur swore. "Yes, I know the name. I think we worked together. I _think._ I feel like I was supposed to have his back."

"Well, he made it out alive. A woman brought him in, name of Alice May Franco."

"Alice May," Arthur repeated. _Red hair. Small. 'Help me damn you help me.'_

Eames frowned. "I'd heard something like this before leaving London to come search in earnest for Arthur. Not the names, but... Go on, Cobb."

"Alice May had an interesting story to tell the people who met her. She said she'd been on a job that had gone to shit. She said Mr. Allen was her architect, and she couldn't locate her extractor."

"She didn't mention a point man," Eames offered. "But then, no one ever does. If you're doing something illegal, you never mention that you had a point man. It's a dead giveaway. No offense, Arthur." Arthur nodded, because he didn't know what he was supposed to not take offense to. "I heard the story, just that the architect had gone into a coma. I thought he'd just fallen off the edge and got himself stuck in limbo."

"That's what I thought at first, too," Cobb said. "Then I started hearing rumors. You hear more rumors at a university than you do working underground, let me tell you. Criminals know how to keep quiet, but kids talk. Usually there's something to it, too."

"So what did they say?" Arthur said.

"That Alice May and Frank Allen had fallen victim to some new kind of illegal technology. I saw a few hand-made signs tacked onto bulletin boards. 'Beware of the glitch' or something like that. I thought that part was bullshit. Then I saw you on the news. It was national, Arthur. And you looked beat-up as hell. It wasn't your most flattering picture."

"I don't even remember them taking my picture," Arthur said. He sat back down in his chair and dropped his head into his hand. "Fuck."

"So," Eames said, "then there are two things we need to accomplish. Search for Arthur's memory, and undo whatever was done to him. We could search out this technology and probably find who's behind it, but probably not quickly enough to help. I think Arthur could do it on his own, but this can't be accomplished awake. Nor, apparently, through natural sleep."

"I know," Arthur said. 

"Cobb," Eames said, "what are the risks of Arthur using the PASIV? And what if I go under with him?"

"No," was Arthur's immediate reaction. He thought for a second, and backtracked. "I mean, no to you going under with me."

"I agree," Cobb said. "It does seem to be, if not contagious, than something in the dream that communicates with minds connected to it. And can infect those minds. Yeah, I guess contagious is really the only way to put it." He turned to Arthur, holding his attention with vivid blue eyes. "I could extract it from you, Arthur. With enough time, and if I knew where to look. For that, you'd have to remember where it was hidden. I'd have to go under with you."

Arthur looked at this man who he supposed was one of his working partners – a man he was supposed to trust. Who he felt like he did trust, in a way. He also remembered that he had children, even if he couldn't remember their names, or the circumstances surrounding them.

"Look at me," Arthur said. "Do you really want your kids to see you like this? Because this is how you'll end up. Even if you could do it, who would extract it from you afterwards? We don't need that kind of cycle."

The three of them sat silent in the kitchen while the seconds ticked by.

"Give me that device, then," Arthur finally said. "I'll look for it myself."

"Will you know what to do?" Eames asked. The concern in his voice was thinly masked under a layer of professional curiosity that Arthur almost remembered.

"I guess we'll see."

"You won't be able to wake without a kick, or the timer running out," Eames said. "If you don't remember how to lucid dream and wake yourself, you'll be trapped."

"Wake myself?"

"You'd have to die in the dream," Cobb said. 

Images came to Arthur then: shooting himself in the head, plunging off of buildings, going out in fiery explosions. The images jolted him. Did he really do those kinds of things? Arthur rubbed his eyes tiredly.

"You know what, let's just do this. All right?"

Cobb stood up. He squeezed Arthur's shoulder as he walked to the other side of him with the device. "Where do you want to..." he began.

Arthur had already pulled his chair away from the table and was rolling up his sleeve. The pattern of chairs in a semi-circle seemed natural and familiar. That struck him as odd: surely they must have done this in a bed, or somewhere safe. Yet he felt confident that he wasn't supposed to move from here.

"I'm going to start with three minutes," Cobb said.

"That won't be nearly enough time," Arthur answered.

"It's longer in the dreams." Cobb didn't look at him when he said this. "And in case anything goes wrong or you can't do it, or you forget how to wake yourself once you're under, it's better to start small."

Suddenly, Eames got out of his chair and came to crouch down next to him. He looked exhausted and worried, and like he very badly wanted to say something.

"What?" Arthur said. "Say it now, before I go under."

"I'm having second thoughts about you using the PASIV," Eames said, in a rush of breath.

Arthur's nerves jumped. "But I can't think of anything else to do. Nothing else has worked."

"I know," Eames said. "I just. Hmm. How to say this? I have reservations about you not being able to wake yourself."

 _He's got a bad feeling about it,_ Arthur read into this, but didn't need to put into words. _And he's probably right._

"It's only three minutes," Arthur said. "I managed that much when they gave me drugs in the hospital."

At his other side, Cobb was firmly holding his wrist. "Let me know, Arthur. Don't do it if you're not ready."

"I don't have much of a choice. Go on."

If Cobb glanced at Eames for what may have been permission to proceed, and if Eames turned away, Arthur ignored the both of them. He felt the slide of the cannula into his vein—familiar, almost soothing—and then saw Cobb lean down and press a button inside his device.

Arthur dropped down into his own misfiring mind.

** ** ** **

As soon as Arthur arranged his chair as if he knew what he was getting into, Eames changed his mind, suddenly. Or maybe his mind changed him. All he knew was what his gut feeling was telling him, which was, _No, bad idea, this is going to get worse._ He struggled only for a moment with the decision to voice this opinion, and then it was out in the open. He couldn't not say it. He had been pushing Arthur to try the PASIV since finding him, and now he wanted to push him away from it. 

But Arthur was determined, and he was also correct: there didn't seem to be any other options. And likely, none would present themselves before Arthur was an incoherent wreck while he was awake. Eames had seen that once before, and thank you very much, that was enough. More than anything, he hated to see dreamwalkers struggle with their work.

Cobb set up the PASIV and in seconds, Arthur's body went limp in the chair. Eames had to admit, it was the most peaceful he'd seen him look since finding him in the hospital. He felt to his core that this was a kind of calm before a storm. He could almost feel it in the air, like electricity. He swore he could almost see it and smell it, too: bright blue, the scent of ozone. He didn't know why that was.

Cobb knelt down to adjust the time on the PASIV. Eames stood over Arthur's chair, feeling like some kind of sentinel to his sleep. Privately, he curled a lock of Arthur's hair behind his ear. He stopped himself at stroking his fingers down over his closed eyes, though. 

Cobb was sitting back on his heels, watching him. Not so private after all, then. 

_Don't_ , Eames wanted to say. _Whatever you're thinking, don't say it._

But Cobb always had something to say. "How many times has Arthur saved your life?" he asked. 

Not the question or comment that Eames had expected. The confusion must have shown on his face.

"I'm asking seriously," Cobb said. "And I'm not implying anything other than that. I'm asking because Arthur saved my life on at least two occasions. I mean literally saved, as in I would have died in the real world if he hadn't been there. So I'm asking you the same thing. How many times would you have actually died, if Arthur hadn't been there to save you?"

Eames, still standing beside Arthur in his chair, gave it some thought. He recounted their many adventures together, if one could call them that. And he supposed that one could, in their line of work. Many times they'd been in a bad situation, and often Arthur found a clever way out of it. But times in which he would have died? 

"Yeah, two," he finally came up with. "There were two times in which I would have been dead, without a chance for rescue, if Arthur hadn't acted. And in both cases, he acted rashly and with no thought for his own safety. But he still succeeded."

"Right," Cobb said. "And how many times did you save his life? Same kind of situation, he would have died if you hadn't intervened."

Eames pursed his lips as he thought this one through, too. Once when they had first met and begun working with each other, he may have saved Arthur from a heavy-handed corporation. Or Arthur may have eventually saved himself, though that didn't seem likely. Another time he had pulled Arthur from the grave – though again, Arthur may also have eventually pulled himself from it. Still, in either case, Arthur might have died without him. It was harder to judge if he'd actually saved Arthur than it was to figure out when Arthur had saved him. He knew the limits of his own strength and resources. He could never know Arthur's.

Still.

"Two, I think," he finally said. "We're neck in neck, I guess." 

Cobb smiled and took the seat opposite Arthur. He smiled vaguely, almost fond. "Then why don't you two just stay together?" 

Before Eames could shoot back the defensive retort about that being both personal and ridiculous, Cobb held up a hand and continued.

"I'm just asking out of a practical mindset. You're not a liability to each other. You work off each other really well. And you're both too independent to, you know, lose yourselves in each other. The way Mal and I did." He looked down at the floor. As usual, grief did not suit him. It weighed him down, made him look less the inspired genius he honestly was, and more like the lost soul, caged by guilt, that Eames remembered from a few years ago. "It just seems like it would work out if you two actually stayed together. I mean, you were the first one to find Arthur, and you didn't even see him on the news. You just searched for him. Am I right?"

Arthur briefly interrupted them by licking his lips in his sleep and frowning vaguely as his head turned to the side. Unusual behavior for someone using the PASIV – unusual enough that it got Cobb striding over to him to check him over. He pressed two fingers to Arthur's neck.

"Pulse is a little quick," he said. "He does feel a little warm. One more minute."

Eames felt a vague tug of alarm somewhere under his ribs. But Cobb didn't look too worried, as if he'd seen this before or had expected it. He had, after all, worked with Arthur for a longer time, and more often than Eames had.

Which brought him back to Cobb's question.

"It's just not how we do things, Arthur and I," Eames said. "The whole staying together thing. We move around too much. It's fine the way it is. Arthur knows that if he needs something, I'll get there. And I know the same of him, when it's dire, when we're not being frivolous. What we do works. It's worked for years. No reason to change it now."

Cobb, still nodding, began, "I just think--"

He never got to finish his thought.

With a hissing, sharp sound, Arthur stiffened in the chair, his eyelids fluttering rapidly. Cobb and Eames both reached for him. Before either could lay a hand on him, Arthur pitched out of the chair and landed, bone-jarringly hard, on the marble floor of his kitchen.

"Christ," Cobb said.

They both got to their knees to help him up, but Arthur wasn't getting up. He wasn't even awake.

He lay on the floor, limbs twitching and spasming, his eyes rolled back into his head.

"Fuck, fuck," Cobb said. He ripped the cannula from Arthur's wrist.

His panic fueled Eames's panic and he tried to grab Arthur, to stop his spasming, calling "Arthur, Arthur," and knowing that Arthur couldn't hear him. He grabbed his wrist, his arm, cradled the side of his face, and shit, he wasn't 'a little warm,' he was _burning_.

"It's okay, it's okay," Cobb was saying, as he efficiently turned Arthur onto his side.

"It's not okay, this is _not normal_ ," Eames said, raising his voice to a shout. He felt sick, like he might be the next one on the floor. He pulled Arthur's head into his lap so he wouldn't harm himself.

"It's okay," Cobb said, "he's breathing, give him a minute." Cobb went to the freezer and scooped out a handful of ice. He wrapped it in a hand-towel and pressed it to the back of Arthur's neck. Then he placed Eames's hand over it to keep it in place.

"Breathing is not enough, Cobb, he's burning up."

"Eames." Cobb's voice was sharp and clear as metal. "Calm down. You're not helping him if you're panicking."

He was right, god damn him. Eames cradled Arthur's head in his lap and managed to breathe. His hands were shaking as he held onto the ice, and to Arthur's shoulder. His heart felt like a grenade in his chest.

Slowly, Arthur stilled on the floor between them, panting, his eyes still open and staring. 

"He should be awake," Cobb said. His voice was soft, dead calm. He pressed his cold hand to Arthur's forehead.

Panic threatened to resurface; Eames fought it down. He listened to Arthur's breathing, unsteady, ragged, but present.

"He's off the PASIV and he practically gave himself the kick," Cobb said. He leaned over Arthur and pulled back his eyelid, checking for a response. There wasn't one.

Arthur was radiating heat from under his clothes. The ice that he was pressing to his neck was starting to melt onto Eames's pants. Arthur didn't seem likely to come around any time soon. His open eyes saw nothing as they darted back and forth. Eames placed his hand against Arthur's neck and felt his racing pulse. His blood pressure was through the roof. It only took a second to decide. Really there was no decision.

"Right, hand me that," he said, indicating the PASIV.

Cobb did as he was asked without question. Eames unraveled a second cannula. "Go on, put him back under."

"It is contagious," Cobb said. "That – that part is true. And we don't know what just happened to him down there, or if putting him under again will..."

" _He's going to die,_ " Eames said. Once the words were out of his mouth, he felt the truth in them. 

"I'm not telling you not to do this," Cobb said. "I could probably find it quicker, whatever is going on in his head."

"You probably could," Eames said. "But you've got kids to look after. I'm not trying to be brave or act the hero. I don't have children; I've got Arthur. And anyway, this is for me to do." He took hold of Arthur's other wrist, the one that wasn't bleeding from Cobb ripping the needle out the first time. He looked back to Cobb as he slipped the needle back in. "You know that, right? You get it?"

"Yeah, I get it," Cobb said. "But listen, it's been a few minutes and we don't know what happened to him down there. Just, I don't know, do what you do and be careful. Eames, you're probably going to go through the same cycle. I'm giving you five minutes, tops. If you start to..." He waved his hand over Arthur, as if indicating everything that had finally caught up with him. "I'm pulling you both out. I don't care if it's only a few seconds."

On the floor between them, Arthur went entirely still. His eyes slipped closed.

Eames jabbed the cannula into his own wrist and said, "Hurry up."

He wasn't even lying down yet when Cobb pressed the button.

** ** ** **

 

The swamp loomed to Arthur's right. Or maybe to his left. Right and left, up and down, these ideas were suddenly abstract and meaningless. Dimensions twisted in and on themselves: the bridge over the icy stream seemed actually to be under it this time. The water flowed upstream instead of down.

The man on the bridge, though – he was still there.

_Eames. Don't let him fall._

Arthur looked up—or maybe down—and understood that he was dreaming. Eames wasn't really there, waiting for him to stop him from plunging into the water. Not yet.

He was here to accomplish something.

So, Arthur looked straight ahead, regardless of which direction "ahead" lay. It didn't matter, and he felt strangely secure with that paradox. 

Straight ahead of him was a world of glowing wires. These seemed to have no pattern to them. They looped, twined, met, forged larger paths, broke away, circled back. Blue sparks jumped from one wire to the next at speeds he could only identify as "light."

And it was endless. _Endless._ This tangle of hot wires, busy with power and surging with electricity, it made up the entire world the entire universe. Every experience he could imagine. Arthur stared at the endless tangle before him, for a long time, considering.

He was looking at his own neural network. 

When he formulated this notion, a sheaf of pathways blazed to life, blinding him. He felt the static in the air around him, and he was so small, so lost in all of this, that he cried out with the knowledge and tried to turn away. 

_I'm in my own mind,_ he desperately wanted to tell someone. _I'm looking at everything I've ever been and done and known and I can't fathom it, I can't_ fathom _it, it's too much._

But there was no one to tell, and certainly no one to lead him through this endless maze. All he had, inside his own mind, was himself.

He guessed that was all anyone had, dreamsharing notwithstanding. No one could ever make their way through this. Not in a lifetime and not in a hundred lifetimes.

He remembered Cobb at that moment. Cobb the extractor, who could navigate this kind of matrix. Except Cobb didn't see what he saw, did he? He didn't see the whole thing. All Cobb saw was bits, portions, infinitely small compared to the whole, raw thing. He stole spare parts, bots of information, located in corners that were, conveniently, tucked away close to the surface.

_But you need to go deeper._

Arthur had never really considered this kind of depth before. He was dreaming; of that he was aware. But dreams were real while you were in them. And he was inside his own tangled mind, utterly lost.

He knew he was supposed to find something, to _extract_ something from himself. Something that was not on the surface, but had been placed deep inside him. Not an inception – those were meant to look like his own ideas. This was not an idea and it was not a deception. Instead, it was something bright, blue, burning with voltage. Something _implanted_ , with purpose.

It was deep in the center, misfiring. Making him misfire. He could feel it pulsing.

"Which way do I go?" he asked aloud, to no one. To himself. Or maybe to the glitch.

A scuttling sound got his attention and his first instinct was to turn away, turn and just run as far and as fast as he could. He spun on his heel, only to face another endless expanse of his own jangled wires. He was stuck inside his own mind and now the Glitch was chasing him. 

He turned back, and there it was: the little, scuttling, metallic thing that had poisoned him inside and out. Everywhere he looked, it still stood directly in front of him. 

Arthur curled his hands into fists. He would not be intimidated by this alien thing inside of him. He'd taken minds apart at his leisure, and things that other people feared had stopped registering on his radar years ago. This, he could handle.

It blinked up at him with electric blue eyes on flexible stalks and clicked its claws. It stared at him, and Arthur stared back.

"You're not going to attack me," he said.

_Click click..._

He gathered up all of his considerable courage and took a step towards it. It took a few scuttling steps back.

"I could crush you with my heel," he told it. "I should."

It blinked at him and didn't move.

He took a step toward it, then another, considering just stepping on it to see what would happen. Yet it stayed where it was, looking up at him, and perhaps seeing him, or registering him in some way.

He wanted to see it more closely, so he crouched down and looked it over. His palms felt sweaty, and his skin crawled. Its cobalt-blue beak housed a deadly needle-tongue that it had driven into the back of his neck and paralyzed him. If it happened again, now, while he was under, he would not wake up. He'd suffocate under the pressure of his own caving lungs. He swallowed hard and leaned in a little closer.

"They implanted some neurological program," he said, addressing the creature, which was really no more than his own image of what they—whoever "they" were—had done to him. "I see you like this because you paralyzed me. I gave you eyes because..."

He thought about this one, wracked his brain. It blinked at him, waiting.

"Because it spies on me? Like a remote vision?"

He didn't know if this was true or not. If so, then remote dreamsharing was right around the corner from this. People would be monitored, catalogued, terrorized. Far worse than any mind-crime he'd ever been party to. He wiped his hand across his mouth and continued.

"But you're giving me information, too. It's not a one way street. Because." He strained to put it together. He'd been trained to understand dreams, symbolism, the mind and how it worked. He didn't remember it, but it was old, ancient training, ingrained somewhere in him. He had been trained on how the mind assimilated ideas and...

"You could grow in my brain." Horror seized him when he considered it. This program, expanding in his mind, filling him up like a long-fingered tumor. "That could happen. It's happened to others. You could assimilate me. But _I assimilated you._ The Glitch, the program. Or at least a small part of it."

 _Click...click...click..._ It snapped its claws at him. Oddly benign.

"You're the projection of the small part of the program that my brain assimilated. What I took from it. If it's using me, watching me or tracking me or whatever... then I can turn it around?"

It blinked.

"I could disarm you. I could _use_ you."

Slowly, on as many as twelve legs, it turned its hardware body around. One blue eye swung back over its silicone shell and looked at him, as if waiting.

"I already know where the rest of it is," he said. "I just need to follow you?"

It didn't answer; couldn't, because it was a part of his mind, and it knew what he knew, nothing more or less.

Arthur stood back up. "Show me where it is." 

The creature-projection swung its flexible eye forward again, and began scuttling ahead. 

It skipped across his mind like a pondskater bug. He went after it, treading as lightly as he could on his own axons and cell bodies, stepping gently across his own synapses. Once, watching it, he remembered swimming in a pond as a child, and the path he was on blazed to life. The action potential hit him at 300 miles per hour at least, stealing his breath and making his hair stand on end with static. It sizzled through him, almost burning him alive and he drew in a breath to scream, but it was over before it even began.  
He flew forward in its wake, landing on his hands and knees, gasping.

The Glitch stopped skittering ahead and turned to look back at him.

"I see," Arthur said, struggling to catch his breath. "How can I know when I'm about to walk into one of my own memories?"

_Click click._

"I can't. Of course. I have to clear my mind."

It moved onward, and downward. He followed it, until he was sure he was deep inside his own network. The wires were denser here, thickly tangled into masses and knots, burning with life. Proprioception, experience, where thoughts were formed, where they became words, and where ideas became actions.

The light pulsed brighter, almost blinding, and his eyes watered in the dream. The heat grew to an almost unbearable degree and he could hear it: the harsh, grating buzz of a short-circuit.

When his vision cleared and his eyes adjusted, he looked up from the bundle of nerves on which he was standing. When he saw it, it sucked his courage dry.

A writhing mass of organic wires, seething with electricity, burned before him. It twisted, tangled in on itself, expanded and ate up the resources around it. And it stood at the height of at least five of him, with width and depth equally towering. 

This burgeoning thing _was_ a cancer. An inorganic piece of information that was nonetheless invading the surrounding areas. This was the reason he couldn't dream. It was eating his thoughts and changing them. The idea that it was not inception, but an actual _implant_ , fed to his neural pathways through chemicals into his veins, made him feel sick with loathing.

How could he assimilate _this_? It was so much bigger than he was. There was no way.

He wiped at his streaming eyes, feeling hopeless, wanting to run from this sickness they'd put inside of him. Just run, wake up, let someone else cut it out of his mind. There were people on the other side of sleep, ones that could help him. That had offered to help.

_But I told them no. I said I'd do it._

The little Glitch thing clattered its metallic pods against one of his cell bodies. It glanced at him again with its moving eyes. Then it turned and walked into the storm. The current singed it immediately into nothingness ... his little projection. Arthur stared after it, panting. 

He had followed it this far.

He had no idea how his physical body would react if he played with this thing inside of him. He didn't know if he could wake up from such a thing. If he could endure it at all. He also didn't see any other options. What he needed to undo was at the center of that electrical mass they'd stuck him with. He had to go through with it, or live with this storm burning inside him for the rest of his days – which would be measured in the minutes he was allowed to rest, and the days, long and endless, in which he couldn't. Anything was better than that. It had to be.

Three steps, taken with confidence lent to him by desperation, brought him to the edge of the twisting mass. Bolts of lightning leapt from its edges. His skin felt tight and burned already. 

_Just get through it. Just get through it; it's down there and you can undo what they did._

He stepped into the storm.

Electricity surged through every muscle he had, every fiber, every nerve, every cell. It scorched him to nothing, dried his blood and marrow, and if he was screaming, he never heard himself. Every sense was shattered.

 

** ** ** **

Eames felt the glitch as soon as he got into Arthur's head. It wasn't just the unbearable heat or the feeling of every one of his nerves jumping. Arthur might not have put his finger right on it. He was a vastly experienced dreamwalker, but without his memory functioning at top form, he might have missed the cues from his own brain.

But those same cues assaulted Eames as soon as he stepped inside. He felt the heat of disease in this dream. He'd seen what had happened to Arthur topside, as if someone had shot a thousand volts through him. Like someone with a tumor in their motor center. He'd witnessed that kind of thing before.

The heat of this sickness didn't feel like the sticky, damp heat of infection, but rather dry, acrid, like burnt metal. Or worn-out, dangerous hardware. The smell of electricity he'd noticed topside was stronger here in the dream.

If he kept going, it would infect him. Arthur didn't question it, Cobb seemed sure, and Eames didn't have any doubt either.

But Arthur's mind felt tired. Worn thin. And most frightening of all, it felt sluggish, like the systematic shutting down of a system. He was fading, perhaps dying even as Eames walked through his mind.

And maybe Eames would do this to save anyone's life, or anyone he found worthy enough to put his skill set (and maybe sanity) at risk. It wouldn't do to let anyone suffer and die when you could save them, even at personal cost. But when it was your oppo, your partner, someone who had your back and you were supposed to have theirs, then you just went ahead and walked through the minefield to retrieve them. It was just what you did.

He took a few steps and found himself in a swamp, surrounded by hot mud that sucked on his boots and tried to pull him under. (He thought he remembered Arthur muttering something about an icy river or stream. This was hardly icy, but then Arthur had been burning up, topside.) An electrical storm flickered on the horizon, over a twisted bridge. 

_Arthur and his love of the strange._ Fondly, he wondered how it was that he'd once thought Arthur had no imagination. He had it, but he preferred subtleties. 

Eames tried to move on, and quickly (that storm was lighting up the sky in the distance,) but the stream held him back almost purposefully. This was _Arthur's_ dream. And inasmuch as Arthur was still conscious, and his brain was still functioning (the dream hadn't collapsed; Eames held tightly to that hope,) Arthur was somehow trying to keep him out.

"Fuck your heroics," Eames said, and moved onward.

His legs pushed against the mud. His breath burned in his lungs and sweat covered him. He struggled closer to the bridge and when he looked up, he saw a figure standing on it, backlit by blasts of lightning on the horizon.

He knew this man was himself. Arthur had babbled to him to stay away from the bridge, and now he saw what Arthur had seen. He didn't know why Arthur's projection of him was standing perilously close to falling off of this bridge into treacherous, disgusting muck, and he cared even less. What he did care about was the fact that the lightning in the distance was becoming duller and slower.

Eames pushed onward through Arthur's trap of a swamp, meant to keep him out.

But now even the swamp was fading.

Arthur's will to keep him out was diminishing. Which meant only one thing. _Arthur_ was fading.

"Arthur," Eames called. The desperation he heard in his own voice made him feel sick. "Hold on, Arthur, if you can hear me at all."

A weak flash of light burst through the sky, as if in response.

And then—and Eames thought he'd gone insane for a second—an army of crabs, seemingly from nowhere, lined up in front of him like little sentinels. _Crabs_ , they looked like honest to god _crabs_. Well, sort of, if crabs had twelve horrid legs.

"Really, Arthur?" he called out, laughing, a little unhinged. If Arthur was still trying to keep him out, then he was still holding on, somewhere. "I could say so many things."

The vile things were small, horrible, with blue beaks and shiny blue eyes, staring at him from atop moving stalks. They had actual claws too, and they all made threatening clicking noises at him.

_We'll stop you, we'll paralyze you, we may even kill you, or at least we'll make you wake up, so turn back._

He didn't hear any of this in words, only in intent, and what he could piece together from the things that Arthur had screamed in his nightmares and babbled afterwards.

"Call your fucking weird little guards off, Arthur. I'm coming in whether you give me crabs or not. Really, what are you trying to tell me?"

As one, they clicked at him.

Eames pressed forward and they huddled themselves into a wall. He looked at them more closely.

They actually _weren't_ crabs. They were little metal things. Some sort of ambulatory bot, silver and black, silicone and electric. It hit him all at once: These were Arthur's projection of the Glitch that was inside of him. They were his twisted visual of the sickness crawling through his mind. Eames almost had to respect his macabre aesthetic. 

But why was the Glitch stopping him from coming through? If it was functioning on its own, then clearly this was a barrier to keep him from saving Arthur. But these actually felt like Arthur himself. He weighed both options and kept coming back to the feeling that it was not some machination of the disease keeping him out. 

What had Arthur done? The idea that he had somehow merged with whatever they had implanted into him made Eames feel shaky and horrified. No good could come of that.

He wiped his muddy hands across his face, through his hair, and on his shirt. Then he dug his legs in, shoved himself forward, and swatted the crab-glitch-things out of his way. They hissed, and squealed like metal on metal, and clicked and scratched and screamed. But not one of them actually hurt him as they toppled around him. 

Yes, these were Arthur's; he was controlling them.

Arthur didn't seem to realize that it was too late for him to back out. Whatever had infected Arthur's mind was already in his. They'd shared the dream, and the script for this program was now inside him, too.

Oh well.

He walked on.

What he eventually came to was a clearing in the fading swamp, and a nondescript building that nonetheless looked exceedingly familiar to him. He'd seen it years ago, only fleetingly, but enough that he would never forget. 

SomniCore had been a megacorporation that pre-dated even his own dreamwork, though the Cobbs and Arthur had been pioneers for them. This had gone badly for them even before Mal's suicide and Arthur had, years ago, been held in this under-the-radar building and tormented for information for over a day.

As far as Eames knew, Arthur had seen very little of the building itself, but he had obviously gleaned enough to recreate it for his dream. But, why the old SomniCore building? That company had collapsed in on itself years ago, or so Eames had assumed when bigger problems—problems named Cobol—had presented themselves. Why was it still on Arthur's mind, after all this time?

The old building hadn't any distinguishing features and that had been the point. This version of it, however, was covered in organic looking wires. Every so often a current would surge through them, connecting them briefly. The wires climbed the outside of the building like white vines. They did not cross the door, which Eames now approached.

He didn't knock. He just pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside.

The original building had had an entrance room, stairs, doors, hallways, offices and interrogation rooms. The inside of this was just one spacious, open room with endless concrete walls. At its center was a small computer station, its screen lit up in blue with scrolling white text.

Operating the computer, his back to Eames, was Arthur.

Small, metal creatures skittered around at his feet. A few climbed up the outside of his trousers, up his back. One nestled on his shoulder. They looked different to the little crab-like things he had seen before. These looked more formed. They were still made of metal, but had less legs, and their eyes were more reasonably proportioned, now sitting on top of their heads in pairs, like spider-eyes. Still glowing blue, though. They had retained their clicking claws but had lost the cobalt-blue beaks, replaced by shining silver pincers under their mouths.

Eames stood stock still, afraid to move.

"Come in," Arthur said without turning around. "And be quiet for a second."

Eames managed to take two steps toward him. One of the spider-crab things crawled down the back of Arthur's shirt. His mouth went dry. 

"Arthur, what are you..."

"Shush," Arthur said. "Give me a minute. I'm rewriting the script." His fingers flew over a keyboard that Eames could now see was holographic. "They hacked into my dreams, right? Stupid bastards hacked the wrong hacker." 

"The Glitch machine, it was a dream-program," Eames said. His voice sounded hoarse and shredded. "You couldn't extract it from yourself..."

"Right, so I overrode it. The program was shit but it had potential," he said. He had his Working Voice on, the one that said he was pretty confident in what he was doing. "They're trying some kind of remote dreamshare thing but they were using it to, A, keep tabs, and B, just see how badly they could fuck people up when they tried to extract." 

_Tiptaptiptap_ , as Arthur's fingers danced over non-existent keys. "I think the idea was for it to be released by extractors when they tried to break in, and obviously for it to spread like a computer virus, only through dreamwalkers. And the added effect was that they could actually use it to track you. Which they are, by the way. Tracking me, I mean. You were right, I was supposed to live so that they could see how it worked, and so that I could spread it. Which I did. To you, asshole. I told you not to come down here."

"Arthur, you were dying."

"Maybe for like, a second, topside."

"No. For more than a minute." Eames hated that he couldn't see Arthur's face; that all he could see of him was his back, and those crawling little creatures scuttling around and on him.

"Well, it doesn't matter," Arthur said. "I reprogrammed it anyway, so I'm reprogramming yours, too. I don't know who they thought they were fucking with, trying to grab _me_ for this. Jesus. They should remember from the last time."

"They?"

"SomniCore."

"Christ."

"Yeah, right?"

Arthur sounded a little more like himself, and Eames took a few more steps toward him. Blue light flashed every time he moved his fingers. The spider-crab creatures looked up at Eames, regarding him with silent calm. 

"Erm, Arthur, those things on you... They're very disconcerting."

"I redesigned them," Arthur said. "They were my projection of the glitch to begin with. I obviously can't get rid of what they put in me, so... I changed the program, and the design of the projections of it changed as well. A little more streamlined, I think. A little more normal looking." He finished what he was doing at the computer with a pronounced tap on the "enter" bar, almost a flourish. This was always Arthur's "I'm done typing" signal, so familiar that Eames felt himself exhale in relief. The blue screen of the computer shut down with a whine. A second later it flared to life again and showed a desktop of Escher's _Puddle_ , with a few innocuous looking folders on it, tucked into corners. Arthur's real-life desktop, and obviously the hard-drive of his mind as well. "Never fuck with a Mac guy," Arthur said.

"Arthur," Eames said. Something was still bothering him, prickling at the back of his neck when he looked at Arthur and he didn't know what it was, where it was coming from. "Turn around for me, would you?"

Arthur spun the chair around to face him. His hair was styled back, as it always was when he was working. He looked severe and put-together, as he often did. His self-satisfied, close-lipped smile looked the same, too: slightly smug, strangely child-soft. He was clean-shaven and smooth, and still had a smattering of freckles.

However, the sharp brown eyes that Eames had grown fond of over the many years were now incandescent blue. Real, true incandescence - they lit his face in a glow that looked like electricity.

Eames fell back a few steps.

"What?" Arthur said. "We'll be fine. We're sharing the dream, right? So the program you're infected with should reboot the next time you go under. We should wake up soon, so..."

"Arthur, your, your..." He waved his hand ineffectually in front of his own eyes.

Arthur frowned. Then he raised his hand to his own eyes. He must have seen how the light bathed his hand in color, because he raised one eyebrow in surprise. He didn't actually know what he looked like. All at once, Eames was terrified for him, and worse, as he had never been before: almost terrified _of_ him.

"That's...weird," Arthur said. "Who assimilated who, I wonder?"

"Let's wake up now, darling," Eames said. He licked his lips, nervous, eager to be away from this strange Dream Arthur, with glowing eyes and metal spiders crawling all over him. "Come on now, let's get out of here. Your body is still exhausted and I don't know what your condition is topside. You scared the hell out of me and Cobb. Why don't you go up first and give me the kick, so that..."

Something blindingly painful resounded through his bones and cut him short. Eames fell to his knees, gripping his head. "Fuck," he grit out.

"Eames?" Arthur came up to him and crouched down, placing a hand on his shoulder. Eames looked up at him, unable to form words. If this Dream Arthur had been at all readable, he would have looked concerned, maybe even scared. One of his spider-creatures crawled from his hand onto Eames's shoulder.

Eames didn't care about that. The pain bore down on him, tearing through his head, down his shoulders, down his arms. This had nothing to do with dreams. This was going on in his body.

Someone was hurting him on the outside. Someone had gotten into Arthur's apartment. They had probably subdued Cobb as well.

"Fuck, someone's topside with us," he breathed. "Arthur, wake up before they get you, fucking _stop them,_ go, go, go."

Without question, Arthur pulled a gun and blew his own brains out. His spider-creatures scattered, squealing in high-pitched, metallic whines. The dream started to collapse.

It didn't matter. Time was different up there and they'd probably taken Eames and Cobb out of the house minutes before Arthur woke up.

Eames still came awake in the back of someone's van, with his arms bound behind his back.


	4. Chapter 4

Arthur came awake instantly and easily, as he normally did. Something hard and metallic was pressed against his neck, and people were lurking over him as he lay on the floor. At least five of them, this time. Four were standing, and one of them had a tranq gun trained on him. One guy was crouching beside him, the guy with the gun to his neck. Arthur looked down as far as he could, and saw that it wasn't a gun, but a taser.

He sighed. 

His arm felt achy, like if he tried to move it too much the bones would grind together. He was down one limb already.

Cobb and Eames were already gone. He'd probably missed them by seconds. Teacups lay shattered on the floor. His toaster was crushed in the corner and his glass coffee pot was in bloody shards. Cobb and Eames had clearly not gone easily. It was a small comfort.

And at least he now recognized his apartment.

"Hello Arthur," said the man standing above him, leaning against his counter. 

"I'm flattered," Arthur said, looking around.

The man—fifties, paunchy, but still sharp, with a greying crewcut and blue eyes—tilted his head in question.

"All of this for me? Ketamine? Tasers? It can't be that difficult. Tell me where you took my team and I'll go with you quietly and tell you whatever you want to know."

The man smiled. He didn't laugh, he just smiled and shook his head. "You'll be doing that anyway. I don't have to tell you shit. I know exactly how you operate."

"You have the advantage of me," Arthur said. His voice cracked and he tried to swallow. He was burning with thirst. "I have no idea who you are."

"Mr. Hollis, head of SomniCore. I'm pleased to find you again."

"Can't remember having met you," Arthur said. "Sorry. But you did manage to erase all of my memories for a few weeks, so, you know. Don't take it personally."

"A rare side effect," Hollis said, "one we're learning about. And you wouldn't know me, Arthur, because you've never met me before. I used to pull your strings back when you worked for us."

"Ah." He swallowed hard. He really wanted some water. His mouth tasted like burnt copper. "Look. I'll make it really easy for you. But only if you let the other two go."

Hollis laughed and crouched down over him, straddling his thighs. His face was shuttered, impenetrable. "I remember how you fought years ago, Mr. Arceneau, and you were pretty impressive. But you're just not that young anymore."

Strangely, this observation, combined with Hollis's dominating position over him, insulted him more than anything else. "I'm only 32, Jesus. I'm like eighty years younger than you are, and yes, I can still make this really, really fucking hard for you. You think I'm helpless because you can shoot me up and plug me with a few thousand volts? I could have kicked you in the balls two seconds ago and broken this guy's nose. I'm being _helpful._ "

"You're still too unpredictable to go easy on you. We both know that you won't go quietly. Everything you endeavor ends in violence. It's how you do things."

"I'm good at violence," Arthur said, "but that doesn't mean I like it. If you know me, then you know I like being reasonable better."

"Get him up," Hollis said, moving away from him. He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.

Arthur moved quickly, batting the taser out of the hand of the kid who had been holding it against his neck. The guy with the tranq gun tensed to shoot, and Hollis turned back around. Arthur got to his feet and held up both hands. The taser kid scrambled for his little toy, looking humiliated and scared.

"You know I can hurt you," Arthur said. "I could have done it just then. I'd rather not, and I really don't want you to hurt me, either. I've had enough."

Hollis came at him fast and hit him so hard that he crumbled right back down to the floor. He tasted blood in his mouth and his nerves jumped, muscles still not coordinated enough to fight back. Hollis grabbed him by the side of his collar and hauled him up halfway off the floor. 

"You have nothing to bargain with," he growled. Then he shoved him back down hard. "Get him out of here," he said to the others. 

Arthur tried to think around the corners, tried to access logic, to find something to say, or do, or become, just to find out what they'd done with Cobb and Eames. He looked around his apartment from his place on the floor. They had trashed it. Cushions had been ripped off the sofa, TV torn from the wall, his desktop relieved of its hard drive and his laptop nowhere in sight. They'd ripped down curtains and gone through cupboards. His bookshelf was in shambles, books all over the floor. They'd even dismantled his stupid game systems.

One detail stood out to him among the ruin of his apartment. The forgery of Aivazovsky's _Ninth Wave_ , that he had stolen from Eames years ago, lay torn out of its frame and ripped on the floor. A quick flash of anger burned in his blood. He shut it away. These people thought he was a threat. The only thing he could do was pretend that he wasn't. He had to make himself seem as harmless as possible. Contrary to what others may have thought, Arthur was a pretty good actor and he wasn't driven by stupid pride, when the lives of others were at stake. He was always willing to do whatever it took to protect or rescue his team. Even pretending to be something he wasn't.

And in his situation, desperation wasn't really too hard to fake. He knew he was going with them. And he knew eventually they were going to incapacitate him again if he didn't at least try to offer them whatever they wanted. Then he would be useless to his team.

"What were you looking for?" he asked, pulling himself to his knees. "I'll get it for you."

"The program and device you used to undo our Glitch program," Hollis said.

He cast about in his mind desperately for something to say, for a way to explain. "There was no program, there's no device." He stood up again. His legs felt shaky, muscles jerky and weak, as if he'd already been shocked a few hundred times. "I did it inside my head. The others have nothing to do with this, and they don't know anything. You have to know that. Let them go, let me _see you_ let them go, and I'll show you exactly how I did it. If you can't agree to my terms, not only will you never know, but I'll kill a few of you and cost you a lot of time and money into the deal. You know I will." So much for passive, he thought. But it needed to be said, because it was logical. They already knew he would fight for his life.

Hollis rolled his eyes. "I've really heard enough of your bullshit. There's nothing we can't find out from you, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's also nothing more you can do for your team; that's over. You're out of resources and you have nothing to bargain with. When we're done with your two partners, we'll shoot them in the fucking head and dump the bodies, and you _still_ won't be able to do anything about it."

Arthur forgot his plan to act helpless; fury overrode everything. He pictured Eames on the bridge, about to fall, and briefly, he thought of the torn painting. Then he launched himself at Hollis.

It took about seven seconds.

He broke Hollis's nose. The guy with the tranq gun fired. Arthur dodged it and the dart hit the kid who had been holding the taser. The tranq-gun guy stood in his living room, looking shocked. Arthur grabbed the business end of the gun and rammed the stock back into the guy's teeth.

It was the fifth guy who brought him down, grabbing the taser from the stunned, tranquilized henchman-kid and jabbing it into his shoulder.

For the second time that morning, electricity became all he knew.

** ** ** **

Arthur awoke strapped to a bed, a white tiled ceiling looming over him. For only a second, he thought he was back in the hospital, and that going home with Eames, and subsequently seeing Cobb and getting dragged off, had all been a dream. Nurse Emma would come in and he would tell her he'd remembered his identity and he could find his way home now.

But the way his muscles ached and burned, and the way his heart still beat erratically told a different story.

And then Hollis was standing over him. His nose was bandaged, but blood seeped through the tape.

Arthur knew it would be a stupid move to grin at him and say _I told you,_ so he didn't. It really didn't matter that he'd lost control of his rage and had taken a few more people out. At the end of the day, he still had nothing to bargain with, and he still had to try to give something up in order to get Eames and Cobb back. So he bit down the righteous feeling he got from seeing Hollis bloody and bruised. 

"I'll give you what you want," he said.

"After that little display?"

"Asking me to not react to this is stupid. I'm supposed to sit there and let you threaten my team, threaten my life? You're being unreasonable."

"I don't need to be reasonable," Hollis said. "You're strapped to a table. We put you under, and we put your partners under. We extract whatever you and Mr. Eames did – don't worry about infecting anyone else, we have that covered – and then we dispose of you."

The mention of Eames and of putting him under lit the fire of hope in his chest. Eames was still alive. Cobb probably was too, if they suspected him of being a part of it.

But they wouldn't be alive for long if he couldn't get free.

"Can I please have some water?" he asked.

"Fuck you," Hollis said.

"So you're sadistic too, or is this personal? It's not just business?" He licked his lips and tried again. "How hard would it be to just bring me a glass of water, you dick?"

Hollis stared down at him, his bruised eyes narrowed, and Arthur got it. It _was_ personal. They wanted the altered Glitch in his head, but it was more than that. He'd hurt this company deeply, viscerally. He'd taken out nine of their agents during their first little go-around, four more before being brought here. He'd undone their program and made it his. And worst of all, he'd bloodied Hollis in front of his men. He'd made them look stupid and weak.

Eames had always warned him that his smugness would eventually piss off the wrong people. He wanted to say, _I can still hurt you, even like this,_ but he refrained. The time for arrogance and surety had passed.

Hollis stared him down for a few seconds—not hard, in his position—and then turned on his heel and walked away. Arthur sighed and let his head fall back onto the plain white sheets. He looked around the room. Grey walls, and glass windows on the second floor, so that people could look down and observe, like an operating room in a medical school. At least it looked clean.

A few seconds later, a man in white scrubs came back into his room with a glass of water. He slid his hand under Arthur's hair with impersonal professionalism and held the straw to his lips. Arthur drank the whole thing, though it didn't go a long way towards soothing his thirst.

Still, he said "Thanks" when he was done. The guy nodded and left him alone.

They couldn't all be sadistic here. That was unlikely. He'd have to find someone he could manipulate. Eames was so much better at this kind of shit. Arthur could pull off deception if he had to, but he wasn't class at it; he had to work, had to think logically about what to say, how to act out of accordance with truth. Eames could just read what people wanted from him and then deliver it. How often had he done something that Arthur wanted him to do, without Arthur even having to say anything? Probably a lot more than he knew about, he thought.

They left him there for a few hours and it was good. He knew Eames was alive. It was a strange knowledge, one that felt firm and real in the depth of his mind. He felt his presence, as if it were lurking inside of him. If Eames was alive, Cobb likely was, too. Arthur was able to rest, even sleep. It wasn't the most ideal or comfortable of positions, strapped down and confined, but at least he was in an actual bed and he could sleep without jolting himself awake every few seconds, paralyzed with terror. 

When he did drop off into dreams, they were lucid, if utterly strange now. Spider-crab-bots followed him everywhere, for one thing. That unnerving blue glow that he knew came from his eyes lit the dark corners of his mind. But that was not the strangest aspect.

The oddest, most surreal thing about the dreams was that Arthur felt someone else in them. He wasn't hooked up to the PASIV, because he knew what that felt like. He wasn't hooked up to anything at all, yet he still knew that he was somehow dreamsharing.

He wandered the halls of his dream until he finally picked a room that looked like his old dorm at the Dream Tech, and sat at his desk. He chose a book from his dream-bookshelf at random and opened it to any page, as if researching. This was how his mind filled in the gaps, and found things that he already knew, but didn't know he knew. He read an excerpt from the book and it told him:

_When remote dreamsharing is finally perfected, the use of the PASIV device will be unnecessary and outdated. Dreamwalkers will have to find new ways to militarize or otherwise protect their thoughts. People will be monitored, catalogued, terrorized. Far worse than any mind-crime you've ever been party to._

_If there is any legal upside to remote dreamsharing, it's that it will become almost impossible to hide crimes, and missing persons will become a non-issue. If you become linked to another person via mind-virus remote dreamsharing, you would be able to find them anywhere, provided they were dreaming at the same time that you were._

Arthur slammed the book closed, knowing, for then, all he needed to know. He had infected Eames with this dream-bug. As slight as the connection seemed to be, he could, in theory, locate him through it.

This also meant that anyone else could possibly locate either of them – unless of course, he had changed the program enough to make himself untraceable...

The overwhelming presence of another dreamer, or maybe more than one, interrupted his process. And again—he didn't know how—he recognized the scent. He knew logically that these people weren't even in the same room as he was. But the part of his brain that picked up scent activated anyway, in response to the stimuli. He breathed in deeply and turned.

"Arthur?" Eames said. He looked hazy, only a shadow, a shape that he recognized: broad shoulders, strong stance. Beside him, a dimmer shadow, even more distant and vague.

"Eames?" Arthur said. 

"Arthur!" the other person called.

"Cobb?" Arthur answered.

It was almost comical, and he nearly laughed, half hysterical with hope.

And then they were both gone. Their shadows disappeared, the sense, the scent, everything. 

So, they had somehow infected Cobb, too. It was weaker with him. He wondered how they had done it.

It didn't matter. Arthur prided himself on being one step ahead of everyone else. And even strapped to a table in a clinic somewhere in New York, he was _still_ one step ahead, and intended to remain so.

** ** ** **

When Eames came around, it was to a mostly dark room with a single bed attached to the wall by chains. The door was heavy concrete like the walls, and a single barred window on the door let in the only light. There was a toilet in the corner, and a desk screwed into the wall next to it.

He'd seen the inside of institutions before and didn't need to be told where he'd been thrown. 

He had come awake in the back of the van, head throbbing, bloody, and immediately been put back under with some kind of compound that didn't feel familiar to his system.

He rolled onto his side on the bed, and bright, flashing pain flared to life behind his eyes. He stumbled off the bed and to the toilet, vomiting nothing but tea and then dry heaving for a few minutes.

He knew what a concussion felt like, too. Combined with whatever they had drugged him with – not good. 

He'd barely seen them throwing Cobb into a black SUV before himself having been thrown into a van. He hadn't seen Arthur.

"Well," he said, testing out his voice, which sounded scratchy and hollow, "he'll have thought of something clever."

The sound of footsteps headed down the hall; Eames counted two sets of them. The shadows crossed the window on the door to his room, and then he heard the keycard slide through. When the door opened, someone flicked on fluorescent lights and he shielded his eyes. The light was worse than anything.

"Eames."

Gingerly, he looked up, lifting his head from its less than lovely resting place. "Cobb?"

"Jesus Christ, get a doctor in here," Cobb said, with surprising authority.

The man standing behind Cobb didn't seem to respond to said authority. He shrugged and said, "Sorry, that's not my job."

Cobb, looking haggard but sharper than he previously had, came into the room and knelt beside him. He looked him over, checking what was obviously a cut on his head, and looking into his eyes carefully.

"How bad is it?" Cobb asked him.

"Mild concussion," Eames said. "And whatever they drugged me with. Any idea where we are? Where Arthur is?"

Cobb leaned in a little closer, though there was really no need to whisper. Old habit, Eames guessed. "This is the place they were going to ship Arthur to if you hadn't gotten there. I heard them talking about him so I'm sure he's here, too."

"So we only delayed the inevitable."

"No. You bought him a few valuable hours to get his shit together before they got him. Otherwise they would have grabbed him when he didn't even know who he was or what he did." Cobb whispered the last part in his ear. "He had a few minutes to change the program. It might save his life."

"Break it up," said the guard at the door.

Cobb backed off, but left his hand on Eames's shoulder. "It's SomniCore," he said.

"Yeah, I know. Any idea what they want?"

Cobb nodded, his eyes dark and a little distant. "They want me to extract it from you. They're going to try you first, because they think I can't extract from Arthur, or that he won't let me or that we have some kind of secret back up plan to thwart them." Cobb's eyes said that he might actually believe this himself. "They're going to try to get it from Arthur themselves first, before letting me see him. I don't know how he is, though."

"He's all right," Eames said, trying to convince himself as much as Cobb. "This means, you know, they're going to infect you with the program. If you extract it from me."

"I know."

"It could ruin you."

Cobb only smiled. "Let them think so," he said, his voice not even a whisper this time. 

That sounded hopeful, though Eames wasn't sure how realistic it was. A wave of dizziness hit him and he rested his head on his arm. Cobb actually rubbed his back.

"I'm not one of your children," Eames said. He didn't mean to snap, but he hated coddling.

"Sorry," Cobb said, though he didn't remove his hand. "I have my kids and my students. That's all I know anymore." His voice was almost theatrically above a whisper as he said this. "I'm not the extractor I used to be. I kind of lost my edge, just dealing with students all day, being a Dad at home."

Eames glanced up at him. Cobb's eyes were brighter, a little coy. He was a terrible liar to anyone who could read him.

"Then let's do this," Eames said. "Come on, tell them to bring it in and get on with it. I haven't got all day."

Cobb signaled the man at the door. "Bring the PASIV," he said. "He'll do it willingly. You remember the condition: I get to see Arthur after this."

"Sure," said the guard. 

Another man in white scrubs came in with a PASIV, one of the newer models. This one was black, and much smaller than the one Eames had always used.

"Are you going to be all right, going under?" Cobb asked him.

"I've been in worse situations than this. I can't forge with this drug in my system and with a concussion, but since that won't be necessary, it shouldn't be too bad. I apologize in advance for any structural disturbances caused by my incapacity." 

"Don't worry about it," Cobb said, rolling up his sleeve.

Eames noticed that the man in white scrubs who had brought the PASIV was also rolling up his sleeve, too.

"Piss off," Eames said. "You're not invited."

"Chaperone," the guy said. "I'm already infected. And you don't have a choice."

"You've no idea how your version of the program is going to work with, or against mine," Eames warned.

The guy shrugged. "Not up to me."

Cobb was quiet during this whole thing, and before slipping the needle into Eames's arm, he looked pointedly at him. _I got this,_ his look said.

Eames found himself wishing he'd worked with him a bit more in the past, so that he could at least be in on the plan, or know the way he worked. Arthur probably knew.

"Let's go," Cobb said, and the orderly put them all under.

** ** ** **

Cobb opened his eyes to Eames's dream, which ended up being a ship, due to the swaying he felt in his head. Crashing waves tore at the sides of it. Cobb immediately felt ill with nausea, and a vicious, sticky pounding inside his head.

"Sorry," Eames said, leaning over the side of the boat. "Where's the third guy?"

"Looking for us," Cobb said. "Your ship is a maze; he's somewhere in the bottom. I'm still pretty good at improvising. We don't have much time. Where's the Glitch?"

Eames seemed inclined to stare at him, his mouth hanging open. Finally he said, "I don't know where it is. I don't know how it manifests in me yet. This is the first time I've been under since then apart from being unconscious, and I don't remember that."

"I just have to give them a piece of information, that's all. Anything will do. That will get me to Arthur and if I can get them to let me go under with him, we can figure this out."

Eames didn't answer. He just stared out ahead at the sea, as if he could see something out there. A crab scuttled across the deck of the ship. Cobb glanced at it. On second look, it seemed less crab-like and more spider-like. Its eyes were strangely blue.

"Eames, come on," Cobb urged.

"Shush," Eames said, waving a hand behind him.

Cobb did not want to shush. He had only a few minutes to get something of the program to show them he had at least tried, enough to get himself infected, and then he would demand to see Arthur, or totally retract his help. He knew they needed him, and they would be more reasonable with him than they would with Arthur, whose defiance always got him into trouble.

"Eames," Cobb said, sterner this time.

"Arthur?" Eames said. He was still staring out over the water. 

Cobb looked into the distance. Beyond the roaring waves, and beyond the mist they created, there did seem to be a rocky island jutting up out of the water. He couldn't see clearly enough to make anything else out.

"Not possible," Cobb said. "Unless they brought him in and hooked him up. I doubt that."

"It is possible. Remote dreamsharing. We shared a..."

"Eames!" a voice called back.

Cobb would know it anywhere. "Arthur!" he shouted over the waves.

He heard the distant reply: "Cobb!"

And then the boat was capsizing, pitching him over the edge, and he was falling back into the real world.

** ** ** **

There were thousands of ways in which Arthur had been woken up in his life, and he could probably catalogue them all. Among his least favorites, being slapped in the face made a pretty good showing, but it wasn't the worst, by far.

Hollis stood over his table, smug and impassive. His hand was still raised as if he intended to bring it down on him again.

It was intended to humiliate and demoralize. Hollis didn't realized that Arthur had long since gotten past such trivialities. It just made Hollis look petty. And the bandage across Hollis's nose looked really stupid. It was hard to feel humiliated after what he'd done to Hollis.

Arthur wanted to rub his eyes tiredly, or scratch his nose, or even crack his knuckles, but he was still strapped down at four points. And he didn't want to give Hollis the satisfaction of knowing that he was uncomfortable. "So, what next?" he asked.

"What's next is you giving us what's in your head."

Arthur attempted to shrug. "You can have it," he said. "But I need to see my team released."

"Again with the terms," Hollis sneered. "You have nothing to bargain with."

Arthur stared at the ceiling and said nothing.

"We get our extractors to get it from you. And believe me, they are the best."

Arthur snorted at that; he couldn't help himself.

"You think they're not? Still hero-worshipping Cobb? Then let me detail the situation to you. Cobb wasn't able to extract the virus that you gave to your partner. Under threats involving things very, very dear to him, he was not able to do it. His methods are outdated and everyone knows his tricks."

Arthur specifically did not react to that. He knew that Hollis was talking about Cobb's kids again, and he also knew that Cobb would stop at nothing to keep them safe – and Eames would probably not try to hide the virus from him anyway. So the two of them must have had some other kind of plan that he just wasn't in on yet.

"So, you bring your extractors in to do all of this hard work, for something that I'm willing to give you?"

"First of all, it won't be hard work," Hollis said. "But mostly, you and your team are too much of a liability. You can't bargain for their freedom because their disappearance is a necessity, and so is yours. But we'll probably keep you on, to work for us. Inception is not a great feat for us anymore."

Arthur turned his head, finally looking Hollis in the eyes. 

Hollis leaned close to his ear. "Everyone has a breaking point," he said. "Yours might not be physical, but I know I'll find it."

"Things get messy when they get personal," Arthur said. It wasn't a plea and he made sure that it didn't sound like one. Nonetheless, Hollis ignored him.

A young man came into the large, open room and stood behind Hollis. He was in his mid twenties, tidy, with dark hair and determined eyes. He wore white scrubs, as if this were some kind of medical procedure. He carried one of the sleek, new model PASIV devices and sat down on a chair next to Arthur's bed.

"You're the extractor?" Arthur asked.

The young man didn't answer and didn't bother to look at him. Instead he just rolled up his sleeve. 

Arthur turned his eyes back to Hollis. "Look," he said. "I'm giving you the chance to do this easily. I'm offering you what you want. You can have the Glitch. I have no use for it. I'll hand it right over to you, but you have to let my team go. They don't give a shit about you or what you do."

"You know that's not true," Hollis said.

"Cobb's out of the business and Eames doesn't even live in the country. Leave us alone, we'll leave you alone."

Hollis didn't answer him, either. He just slipped the cannula of the new PASIV into his vein and taped it across.

"No?" Arthur said. "All right." He turned back to the extractor. "Hey."

Finally, the guy looked at him. His face showed annoyance and impatience.

"Sorry for what's about to happen," Arthur said.

He had a second to see the look of concern—fleeting, but there—cross the extractor's face, and then Hollis pressed the button.

** ** ** **

He saw the extractor come into his dream and take out a few projections of the human sort. The extractor was clumsy, his mind like an oven mitt trying to open a safe. He wasn't going to get far.

Arthur actually didn't know how it was going to manifest, he only knew that it would. He wasn't even the conscious sentinel to to the Glitch anymore. It was a part of him, at least for now. With his team threatened, his subconscious could not control its reaction to intrusion.

So he stood by, in his swamp, and waited.

The extractor made his way through the icy mud, looking put out, pissed off, bothered. Finally he spotted Arthur. His eyes widened for a moment, and then he frowned in annoyance. Clearly he had worked enough to see all kinds of crazy self-images. However, Arthur wasn't doing his on purpose.

"I'm getting in whether you want me to or not," he said. "You can't scare me like that."

"I'm not trying to," Arthur said. "And I already said I was sorry. Someone once told me that you only get one apology. I did warn you."

"Whatever," the extractor said.

The first thing that happened was the noise. The squealing, scuttling of little metal legs. Then came the scent of burnt wires. Arthur couldn't immediately see the projections, because they were behind him. But it sounded like a lot. 

The extractor's eyes went wide this time, and stayed that way. He whispered "What the fuck," and stumbled backwards, just barely staying upright.

Arthur stood in place, unmoving, arms at his sides. The stampeded from behind him, the little sipderbots. They didn't even heed him as an obstacle, and didn't go around him, instead choosing to climb up his legs, up his back, over his head, down his chest, down his arms. Their sharp little legs barely even bothered him anymore. But there were thousands, and for a second, as they made their way toward the extractor, they covered him entirely.

The screamed in high-pitched whines like feedback as they converged on the extractor. The extractor's answering scream was more organic. They covered him completely as they had done to Arthur, and he fell under their weight and the horror of them. They didn't spare him as they had spared their host. Arthur saw their little, shining mouth parts, thousands upon thousands of them, plugging into the skin of the extractor's bare neck, arms, and face. They crawled inside of his clothes, making his shirt bulge and ripple. 

Maybe they went under his skin; Arthur didn't know, because by that time he had to look away.

** ** ** **

Arthur didn't even try to leap out of the bed. He'd been under for only minutes and hadn't even begun to forget the circumstances of reality. He just looked to his side.

A tech or something had ripped the cannula out of his arm, but then had seemingly forgotten all about him. Everyone's focus was on the extractor, who lay twitching and drooling on the floor. He looked like he was choking. It was no wonder, because the Glitch had probably paralyzed him in the dream.

Someone called for a crash cart. Arthur looked up to the windows of the observatory, saw their terrified, frantic faces as they watched the young extractor struggle to live.

He didn't feel righteous or happy or smug, as he would probably be accused of feeling. He wasn't sadistic enough to enjoy something like this. The only things he felt were regret and frustration. Why couldn't these people just see it his way? It would save everyone so much time and grief.

And yes, Hollis was right; Arthur was eventually going to have to come after him again. But he wouldn't have had to if they hadn't come for him first, and then come after his team. He hated that they couldn't just see reason.

The whole thing was a huge fucking mess.

The extractor was taken out on a stretcher with doctors hovering over him. Arthur didn't know if he was alive, or if he was, if he would remain alive.

The only one left in the room with him was Hollis. His jaw was clamped shut hard, his eyes gleaming. Malice seemed to come from him in waves.

"I tried to tell you..." Arthur began.

Something in Hollis's eyes stopped him. "We're going to try again," Hollis said. "I can keep doing this."

"You can keep wasting your people? You and I are very different."

"And every time you pull this kind of shit," Hollis said, "I'm going to hurt you worse."

Arthur shut his eyes tight and turned his head away. He didn't doubt what Hollis was telling him. This guy wanted an excuse to hurt him, and he knew it was coming. This was supposed to be a dream-tech clinic, but it was really a prison. It was just a high-tech prison that had access to all sorts of fun things like chemicals, shock "therapy" equipment, hallucinogens, and other clinical forms of what basically amounted to torture.

Everyone did have a breaking point, and Arthur wasn't sure what his was. He also knew that he couldn't stop the Glitch from protecting itself even if he tried to force it. Knowing that giving it up would do nothing to save Eames and Cobb, his subconscious would not call his guards off.

Still. It was so wasteful.

He knew it wasn't out of mercy that they put him under before running a few thousand volts through him; it was just to scramble his brain and make his security lax.

It might indeed have scrambled his brain, but it did nothing to bring what they wanted closer to the surface. Instead, as three extractors approached this time, he held out both hands defensively and was as surprised as anyone when bolts of lightning seared out of him and struck them down.

 _Oh holy shit, shit, I'm a Sith,_ Arthur thought, and laughed hysterically as the dream started to collapse.

He woke up still laughing hysterically, and, much to his chagrin, he couldn't stop. He just couldn't stop fucking laughing, even as one of the extractors seizured to death on the floor beside him and the other two remained unresponsive. He wanted to stop laughing. He wished he could. Everything hurt, his muscles burned, his bones felt hot, like there was steam rising from them. But they had scrambled his fucking signals and everything translated into this wild hysteria.

He couldn't stop when Hollis backhanded him until his mouth was bloody. He couldn't stop as they removed the extractors from the room, the evidence of his out of control dream rampage. He couldn't stop when most of the observers left him, alone and burning on the table.

He did stop some time later, when Cobb finally came into the room, practically dragging Eames along with him. Eames, who was streaked in blood and looking almost as shitty as Arthur felt.

Only then was he able to stop laughing and breathe.

** ** ** **

Cobb was hitting a point where fury was about to override reason. His years on the run had hardened him to all kinds of situations, though he had still occasionally lost his cool – he'd be the first to admit that. He wasn't the most even-tempered person on the job, and surely not the most stable. That had always been Arthur. The years at home, just teaching and being a father, had made him feel peaceful. Not always happy--he still grieved--but for years he had been so much less likely to lose his shit. 

Cobb was about to lose his shit.

His condition for helping SomniCore was that he would be allowed to see Arthur. He had somehow gotten only mildly infected with their badly written (and re-written by Arthur) dream-glitch – not entirely. Probably due to the fact that Eames had a concussion and they dream had been too short. They wanted him to completely the job, though, and he knew he would. This was possibly a career-ruining move. All of SomniCore's attempts to extract from Arthur had been unsuccessful. He didn't know the details or how Arthur had done it, but he did know, from overhearing a few techs talking, that there had been at least two fatalities.

This was an entirely new development in dreamshare.

The stakes had gone up. They needed him. And they hadn't hurt him so far. They had threatened him, but in desperation. He was going to see Arthur anyway, because they now wanted him to extract the data – and it was high risk, because from what he understood, Arthur couldn't control his deadly projections.

So Cobb, now putting his life on the line for them, had raised his price: Eames got medical care, and came with him when he went to extract from Arthur.

They'd cleaned Eames up and stitched his head. He had refused pain killers (wise choice, Cobb thought,) and Cobb still had to help him along as they were led into the large, open room where they were keeping Arthur. Eames was trying to help as much as he could, but he wasn't light, and when he stumbled, Cobb had to struggle to catch him.

So now at least the three of them would be in the same room, and Cobb felt fairly sure that they would be able to come up with something. They'd done for him what they hadn't done for the other two: they'd met his price.

But now the price was about to rise exponentially with every one of Arthur's cries of distress. Cobb wasn't any sort of father to Arthur – at most, he'd felt a bit like a distant older brother, and that was largely due to Mal's fondness for Arthur. And he'd never felt the need to look out for him, because that was something Arthur had always done for himself. But this was just a matter of reacting to sadism.

He hadn't expected to find Arthur in an observation room, restrained and in hysterics. Neither had Eames, who tensed next to him, at once at attention. Cobb felt how close Eames was to doing something rash. He closed his hand around Eames's arm in a clear signal. _Not yet._

Eames was a professional, not a sap, and he got it.

Hollis stood by, impassive and pale, as Eames went to Arthur's bed. Cobb took a long look at Hollis. He'd actually seen this man, ages ago, during his SomniCore days. Maybe Hollis hadn't been at the helm back then, or maybe he had and no one knew it. But Cobb remembered every face he'd seen, every name. Details stayed with him. Carl Hollis. He knew this guy. He just had to go back in his mind and remember what else he knew about him.

Arthur stopped making whatever sound it was that passed for laughter when he saw Eames. 

"I tried to tell these lousy ginks that putting their mitts on me was gonna get them ended." He laughed again, hoarse and hysterical. "Think they listened?"

Eames put his hands on Arthur's face and thumbed away the wetness on his cheeks, sweat or tears or both. He held Arthur with his eyes, searching him out. Cobb watched, fascinated, and keenly feeling the old, buried pang of his own loss. And Arthur actually allowed this touch, which he might not have if he had all his marbles. 

"They obviously didn't," Eames said.

"Eames, you look like shit, someone did a number on you?"

"I'll be all right."

"That's enough," Hollis said, making his presence known to Arthur. "Break it up over here. We're not finished. I don't have what I want."

"You won't fucking let me give it to you!" Arthur said, his voice raw and desperate. "You stupid asshole! This would have been _soup_ if you did it my way, but no, you get me jingle-brained and I clam, you end up with _dust_ , your trouble boys are iced and it's because of you, you shithead punk!" He strained against the restraints and thrashed violently.

Cobb held one hand up to Hollis, stilling him with a gesture that said _'I'll handle it_.' Hollis must have remembered him from his SomniCore days, too, because he actually stopped.

Cobb came to the other side of the bed, but didn't touch Arthur. He didn't have that privilege and didn't need it.

"I'm gonna kill him, Cobb," Arthur said.

Cobb didn't answer. Hollis didn't say anything either, seeming secure in his safety from Arthur's wrath. For a moment the only sound in the room was Arthur's frantic breathing, and the quiet slide of Eames's hand through his hair.

Then Arthur said, "Are they sending you under with me?"

Cobb nodded. "Will you let me?"

Arthur swallowed hard and looked away, staring hard at the ceiling. "I'll try. I'll try."

Hollis approached with the PASIV. Arthur stared him down, gritting his teeth. "Don't touch me. Cobb does it. Or Eames. But you don't get to touch me."

"You're hardly in any position to..." he began.

"You keep telling me what I'm in a position to do. I'm gonna shut your trap, motherfucker. You're gonna dance for me. Wait."

Something in Arthur's eyes—something Cobb recognized himself—stopped Hollis's approach. His hesitation was obvious and would soon become a deadly point of contention when he realized that he'd gotten caught being intimidated by someone who couldn't move. Cobb felt the danger hanging over all of them and he didn't know how to defuse it. Arthur could not be talked down when he was like this.

"Hang on," Eames said to Hollis. "Please let me do it. There's no way I could swindle you with your own PASIV. You know how they work just as I do. Just let me hook them up; it will go easier for everyone."

Hollis stood, considering. He could not afford to bow to Arthur's threat.

"Please," Eames said. "He's had enough."

Thankfully, Arthur kept his mouth shut this time, choosing instead to look up at Eames, his eyes burning with some kind of unhinged devotion that Cobb had never seen in him before.

But which he had seen in Mal towards the end. He had to take a breath and steady himself.

_But Mal was trying to die. Arthur's just in shock. Different._

Hollis handed the PASIV over to Eames nonchalantly, as if it wasn't in fact a concession, but a mercy.

"Thank you," Eames said. He unstrapped Arthur's arm quietly and stroked the bruised skin of his wrist, looking for a usable vein. Eventually he had to turn his hand palm down and use the back of his hand. He did this with practiced ease, his fingers steady in spite of what must be shaky vision. Blood dripped from the stitches in his head and landed on Arthur's arm.

"Hey," Arthur said softly to him. "What's the grift?"

 _Do you have a plan?_ Cobb understood, in the language of that man that Eames called Arthur That Was. The boy who emerged when he wasn't paying attention. He hoped that Hollis didn't remember Arthur's oldest peculiarities. But Hollis probably did.

"Haven't got any, darling," Eames said. "Go to sleep, let Cobb in, give them what they want."

"I've been trying to," Arthur said.

Eames patted the back of his hand, above the cannula. "Try harder, pet."

Arthur looked at him for a second before nodding firmly. Then he looked to Cobb. His eyes remained focused on him.

"Cobb," Hollis said. "Extract this from him. Don't fail. You know what happens if you fail us."

"Right," Cobb said, bitterly. _My kids. The perfect bait._ Then he looked back to Arthur. "Ready?"

"Yeah," Arthur said. He looked again to Hollis. "I'm still gonna kill you."

Eames pressed the button before Arthur could say anything else.

Cobb opened his eyes to a network of glowing blue wires. In the center of them stood Arthur, his hair neatly in place, his clothes straight and tidy, and his eyes glowing bright blue.

Fist-sized spiders, or what looked like spiders, scampered around his feet like familiar pets. Their eyes—pairs of them—glowed the same color as Arthur's. A decent handful of them eyed Cobb. One of them squealed at him.

"Jesus," Cobb said. "Arthur, it's me. Please."

"I know," Arthur said. He sounded calm, almost serene. "Don't worry."

"I don't even begin to know how to extract from you. You know that."

"You don't have to," Arthur said. "This is all up to you. I can't hurt you, Cobb. Never could. You or Mal, I just never could. You shouldn't even question that. If you want it, you can have it. Just make sure it's what you want. It's a disease. I have it under control, my version of it. But it can still ruin your whole career." 

"You seem pretty lucid in here, Arthur. You know that this glitch of yours killed three people topside."

Arthur sighed, then sat down on the floor, which was made up of criss-crossed, bright blue lines. His disturbing sentinels crawled up his arms. One of them settled on his hair, slightly ruffling the strands. He rubbed tiredly at his glowing eyes. "I tried to warn them," he said. "I couldn't just let them have it. The second I did, they would have killed you and Eames. They're still going to. That's why I need a way out. Eames got one of my hands free but I didn't see any guns or anything in the room. I don't know if I could fight my way out. My body is really tired and my arm is still weak. I don't know how far I could get, and you saw Eames. He can't even see straight. We need a plan."

Cobb took up a similar position, sitting across from Arthur on the strange floor of his mind. "If I get the Glitch, they'll need me alive to extract it from me. At least for a little while. Then, yeah, they'll probably kill us all."

"They threatened your kids," Arthur said. "They know where they are?"

Cobb smiled at him. "They'll be fine."

"You said they were with their grandmother."

"They are. In Tokyo."

Slowly, Arthur smiled back. His smile was wan, lit strangely by his own eerie glow. "I see. Then Proctus Global knows you're missing."

"They'll never get here in time," Cobb said.

"Right. So." The little spiderbots nuzzled under Arthur's neatly pressed pants. One of them lazily climbed the inseam, its metal legs covered in fine protruding needles, clinging easily to the fabric. It stopped on his thigh to swivel around and look at Cobb, clicking its mouth-parts.

"That's... really frightening, Arthur."

"You get used to them. So look. Here's the room we're in, right?" He spread his hands, and between them appeared a schematic of what Arthur could see of the room. It appeared in the same lines of his network, looking like something between a three-dimensional blueprint, and electromagnetic brainwave patterns. It only covered the southern half of the room, what Arthur could see from his limited vantage point.

"Right," Cobb said. "Here's what's behind you." He filled in the rest of the room easily. "You're on a table in the center. There's a table behind you, medical equipment all over it. IV stand. There's an AED left on the floor, possibly having been used on one of the extractors. Also probably useless to you. There are windows behind you, too. I counted about ten people up above, observing. Unless any of them are actually armed guards, they're probably too far away to interfere. But even if Eames got one of your hands free, he'd be easy enough for anyone to subdue in his condition and probably not a safe bet. I could still get you free pretty quickly, and we could take out Hollis together if it really came down to that. Hollis isn't carrying. I wish he was, because they we could disarm him. He'll have guards who are armed, all around the building."

"If we could get him under with us," Arthur said, "I could kill him pretty easily."

"We could kill him without getting him under, Arthur. But the rest of SomniCore? I know you fought your way out once, but it's different this time."

"I'm only thirty two," Arthur said, sounding offended.

"I didn't mean it like that. Christ. You said it yourself. Your body is tired, your muscles are probably like rubber. You're in shock. Eames can hardly stand upright. We might have to talk our way out."

" _You_ talk," Arthur said. "Let me keep doing the crazy, fucked up, out of control act."

"You know that's not an act," Cobb said. "You can't act, Arthur, you never could. Even Eames says you're shit at dissembling. His exact words. Your wires really are crossed. That's really what your body is going through. Can you trust yourself topside?"

"Just get me out of the restraints and we'll see."

"I'll get you out," Cobb said. "But I need the Glitch. Give it to me, and then I'll convince Hollis to go under with me. If it's true that we can remote dreamshare—and I'm not convinced—you can come into the dream and run interference."

Arthur laughed. His spiderbots scattered briefly, then recollected around him. "'Interference?' Cobb. Come on."

"Or whatever you're going to do," Cobb said. "Just give me the program so we can wake up. He's going to probably give us the kick in a few seconds, real-time."

"If you're sure," Arthur said.

"I want it. I'd like to see how your version works."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "You scare me, Cobb. You've scared me since we met. Jesus."

Cobb smiled. "I inspire you, too."

Arthur shook his head, though he smiled back. "Fine," he said, standing up. Spiderbots fell from his clothes, some clung to him, a few scurried back up. "I can't wait to see how this manifests in you."

"Me too," Cobb said. He wasn't lying. This thing was dangerous, this program. Arthur had defused it somewhat, had changed it to be outwardly deadly instead of inwardly destructive. But it could still ruin his career. However, he was also still the best in the business; that was one thing that had never changed over the years, throughout everything he had endured. The Glitch _could_ ruin him. But it wouldn't. And he was burning to know what it felt like. He stood up, face to face with Arthur. "Come on." 

Arthur turned his palms out, as if asking a favor from him instead of granting one.

Thousands of spiderbots emerged from some dark space behind him. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. The swarmed Arthur, covered him, so that he was nothing more than a tall, writhing mass of metal limbs, glowing eye-sets and clicking pincers. They moved as one over him, and towards Cobb.

 _Oh fuck oh fuck, please, no,_ Cobb thought nonsensically, thinking of every spider he had ever seen, great big juicy fuckers, James's scream when one had bitten him once, Philippa crying in his arms at night because one had been hanging on the ceiling above her bed, this was too much, he had seen nightmares but this was just disgusting and intrusive and

and

and he had to let it in. He couldn't refuse. He overrode his natural repulsion at the infestation, because that's exactly what it was, and he let them in.

They converged on him, all narrow limbs, thousands of legs, their metal bodies round and heavy, covered in bristling needle-hairs. They crawled all over his clothes, under his clothes, in his hair, in his mouth, under his skin, and it was too much, too much, god, _spiders_ , this he could not abide...

And then there was a sound like the rushing of wind, flapping and fluttering, batting his face, his head. The beating of wings as the projections of the Glitch transformed into Cobb's own.

A thousand birds of prey leapt off of him as one. Their wings were made of wire, and their wide eyes, with pupils constricted in predation, glowed blue. The birds swooped and swung back up, like one beast, in unison.

Arthur ducked, covering his head with both hands to avoid being battered with their hard wings. Cobb's birdbots and Arthur's spiderbots scurried and flapped among the dreamscape. 

Slowly, Arthur peered out from under his arms and looked at him. "Really Cobb? _Birds?_ "

"They're birds of prey, asshole," Cobb said. "It's not like they're sparrows or doves."

"Huh," Arthur said, his laugh a derisive huff that sounded a lot more like himself than he had since Cobb had first seen him in his own apartment, falling to pieces.

"So," Cobb said. "You have the layout of the room. We wake up. I get you out of restraints. Then I take Hollis under. It'll be his choice. You make a show of looking after Eames but if you can both go under together, even for a few seconds, with remote dreamshare? You two come up with something in the time it takes me to incapacitate Hollis or incept him."

" _Incept him_? Arthur asked. "Cobb, you'll have seconds at the most."

"Seconds, and the Glitch. I wake him up, we walk out of there with him on a leash."

"Not gonna happen," Arthur said. "Even with the Glitch. _Seconds_ , Cobb. Use your head."

"Excuse me," came another voice, from somewhere behind Arthur. A shadow lurked behind him, unmistakable in its silhouette, though lacking details. 

Cobb didn't need the accent or the voice to know him; Arthur's immediate reaction all but shouted _Eames_ as he spun around, searching.

"Sorry to interrupt," came Eames's voice. "But if you could hurry up and get yourselves topside? I was hoping for the chance too access either of you like this. I seem to have been kidnapped right out from under you, I'm afraid. They've got me in the blasted van again. Arthur, your right arm is still free, if that helps you. At least it was when they tranqed me. There's a man guarding you now. He's next to Hollis and he's carrying the tranq in his right hand. There's a gun in his side holster, left side. I know you're in pain, Arthur, I can tell, and I'm sorry. Be careful when you get up; try to go slowly so your leg muscles can get used to gravity again. Also, so you don't alarm the guards. Hold your hands up if you can, and try, do try, Arthur, to appear harmless. I know it's difficult. When you wake up, obviously our connection will be broken."

"Eames," Arthur said, looking around as if that would provide a clue as to where he was in reality.

"Yes, and don't give Hollis the virus, Cobb. He's counting on it so that he can track all of us should we escape. Perhaps Arthur could Glitch him to death, but I don't think you'll have the time or opportunity. Arthur, if you would hurry, darling."

Arthur didn't need anything more. Before Cobb could even ask him if he had altered his plan in any way, he had pulled his own gun. He spared Cobb a brief glance with his burning, blue eyes, and then he blew the back of his head out.

Spiders screamed, scattered, and burned to dust. The network of lights went dark.


	5. Chapter 5

Arthur didn't open his eyes when he woke up. He didn't move, didn't twitch, didn't breathe. Or if he did, it was minimal. He heard Cobb come around a second later, heard him shuffling towards the bed.

"Did you get it?" Hollis asked. And then, "Is he still under?"

"I got it," Cobb said. "And Arthur... he should be awake."

Cobb trailed off, and Arthur waited. He hoped, desperately, that Cobb would catch on and wouldn't give anything away. He hadn't had time to even formulate a plan in the dream, much less articulate one, before shooting himself awake. Topside, it came to him easily. 

They'd done this con once, ages ago, only the other way around.

_Come on, Cobb. Remember._

"Arthur?" Cobb said. 

There was a tremor in his voice, and without seeing his face, Arthur couldn't tell if it was sincere or not. He could only lie there and hope that Cobb hadn't lost his instinct for pulling off shit like this, for improvising and going along with it.

He felt Cobb's fingers on the pulse of his neck, where it was clear that he was alive. He waited.

"Jesus Christ," Cobb said, as he frantically unbuckled Arthur's other wrist. "Jesus Christ, Arthur. Come on!" He stopped to shake him. "Someone get a crash cart in here!"

 _Please don't,_ Arthur thought. _I've had enough of electricity._ But Cobb must have been counting on Hollis's reply, or ready to put a stop to this if they did as he asked.

"Sorry, Cobb," Hollis said. His voice sounded cautious. "You know I can't do that."

"Fuck you!" Cobb shouted. "This was your end of the deal!" 

He unbuckled Arthur's ankles next and made as if he was going to lift him off the table. Again, Arthur hoped that he wouldn't. He needed to be just where he was. To his relief, Cobb let him sink back down, instead just gripping him under the shoulders. Which meant that, yes, Cobb was reading him. Just like the old days.

"I held up my end of the deal," Hollis said. 

"You piece of shit," Cobb said, over Arthur's shoulder.

Hollis's silence was telling. He wasn't buying it. That was all right, because Arthur only needed a few seconds and the right circumstances.

 _Let's hurry this along,_ Arthur thought. It was hard to hold still when his muscles still wanted to twitch and spasm. He let his head fall back over Cobb's arm and struggled to be as still, as _dead_ as possible. And Cobb was so bad at this acting shit, just as bad as Arthur was. Worse, probably. At least Cobb was hiding his face in Arthur's neck as he pretended to cry by shaking his shoulders.

"Check him," Hollis ordered. 

Arthur had not seen the guard, or intern or tech or whoever it was that had joined them in the room when they'd taken Eames away. All he knew was what Eames had told him: There's a man next to you, and he's got a tranq in his hand, and a gun in a side holster. Arthur's arms were free, hanging limp over the sides of the arm restraints as Cobb lifted him half off the bed.

He felt the guard move closer to his side, so that Arthur's arm was almost at the man's back. He felt the guard's fingers press into his neck. They lingered for a second, then pressed more firmly.

"Shit, he's not..." the guy began.

But Arthur had already lifted the gun from the holster. He opened his eyes and took a second to have a quick look at his surroundings: One alarmed but disarmed guard, Hollis at the head of his bed, Cobb still kind of in his way, and that expansive, glass-walled spectator room above him. 

He took note of all of it in less than a second, and then he fired the gun at the glass. The spectators screamed, scattering. It was the perfect diversion because it came from above, not from him. And because the guard still hadn't realized that Arthur had his gun.

Glass rained down and Arthur shot again, this time at the windows behind him. He caught sight of Hollis's shocked, almost blank face as the windows above him shattered. 

Cobb leapt off of him, clearing the way, and Arthur sat up and shot the guard, hitting him in the shoulder. The guard dropped his tranq gun and Cobb ran to the other side of the bed and dove for it. 

An alarm blared to life. A few spectators lingered in the observatory, panicking, trying to find the exits. Arthur didn't bother with them; he had to save ammo in case he needed to shoot his way out of here. He was hoping that he wouldn't. He had collateral.

"Don't even grab whatever you're reaching for," he told Hollis, aiming the gun at him while still lying down.

Hollis let his hand fall to his side. Then he backed up a few steps and raised both hands. His smirk told Arthur that he still thought he was ahead of the game. And maybe he was.

"Got it," Cobb said, holding on to the tranq gun, giving it a quick once-over to make sure he knew how to fire it.

"Good," Arthur said. He didn't take his eyes off Hollis. He waved the gun at him, indicating that he should move to the foot of the bed. Gingerly, he put his feet on the floor and eased himself off the bed.

Dizziness swept him like a wave and he sat back down. His legs trembled and he waited for it to pass. Black spots danced in front of his eyes.

"Give me the gun," Cobb said.

"Nope. I got it. Just give me..."

"We don't have a second," Cobb said.

"You probably don't," Hollis offered. "I did have Mr. Eames taken away for execution. It's unlikely that you can find where they're going to carry it out, and if you could, you could probably not get there in time."

"I'm not a fan of mindlessly slaughtering people," Arthur said. His vision cleared of black spots and he looked at Hollis again. "But I do need a human shield to get out, and I'm willing to do things that I don't enjoy doing to escape. Are we clear?"

Hollis nodded, still smirking. "Perfectly, Arthur."

"I don't need you alive, to tell me where he is. I'm not going to go out of my way to spare you. If someone shoots at us, you take the bullet. Still clear?"

"Are you stalling until you can stand up?" Hollis asked.

"If I was, then I'm through now." This time when he got up, his legs held him. His vision cleared and grew sharp, every edge defined. Just the way he expected it to be.

Cobb patted Hollis down efficiently, like a man who had never made pancakes for weekend cartoon wake-ups or attended a PTA meeting. "Car keys," he said, lifting them from Hollis's belt. "SUV."

"Let's go," Arthur said.

The two of them got behind Hollis, Cobb to Arthur's back, walking backwards. Arthur put Hollis into a submission hold around his neck, using his stronger, uninjured arm. He held the gun to his head with his other hand. Then he realized that he didn't like that Cobb was exposed behind him.

"Switch with me," Arthur said.

"What the fuck, Arthur."

"Cobb, just do it." He pushed the gun into Cobb's hand, shoved Hollis at him, and took the tranq gun. Cobb was sandwiched between Hollis as a shield, and Arthur behind him, covering his back.

"Jesus," Cobb griped. "I'm not incapable." He pushed Hollis forward toward the door. 

A group of men came bursting through the door before they got to it. When they saw what was going on, they hesitated.

"Drop your weapons!" Cobb shouted at them. "I don't need him alive."

"Do as he says for now," Hollis said. "I'll take care of this later."

Arthur had no doubt that Hollis was nowhere near through with them, but he intended to end Hollis's life once his usefulness was up anyway. The guards did as Cobb ordered and allowed them to pass. If they had any thoughts of opening fire on Arthur, they ended when Arthur blithely fired two darts into two guards. As they fell, he took their guns, too, and relieved them of their ammo.

The three of them made their way out into the hall.

"I wasn't implying that you were incapable," Arthur said. "Stop getting defensive. It's my job to have your back."

"You haven't been my point for years, Arthur."

"Old habits. Christ, shut up and keep moving."

They moved down the white, tiled halls. The alarm kept screaming, and more guards in flak jackets came crashing around the corner. Arthur shot one in the leg with the tranq gun, over Hollis's and Cobb's shoulders.

"Next time it'll be an actual bullet," he said to the others. "And I'll aim for your soft little heads. You know who I am. You know I'll do it." In fact he had no idea if anyone knew who he was, these measly grunts. Maybe they didn't. But, if they hadn't in the past, they did now.

"Let us pass," Hollis said calmly.

They made it around another corner. 

"How'd you know I'd get your con?" Cobb asked.

"I didn't. I just couldn't think of anything else to do. Neither of us can act for shit, so I was just hoping."

"I think I did pretty good," Cobb said.

"I'll make sure you get nominated for the Bullshit award."

"The award for Quickest Asspull goes to you," Cobb said. "As usual."

They made it to a stairwell. 

"Do you know where we're going?" Arthur asked.

"Garage."

"Oh. Good. That makes sense." 

Cobb hit the panic button on the keys, and they followed the alarm to Hollis's car. Cobb handed Hollis off to Arthur and then rifled around under the seat. He found another gun, rope, duct tape, a box of hypodermics, and a PASIV device. 

"Wow," Cobb said, looking over the various items. "I don't even want to know how you spend your free time." He pulled the PASIV out.

"You're going to try to extract his location from me?" Hollis asked, as Arthur shoved him into the back and got in behind him.

Arthur didn't answer. Cobb threw the duct tape to him, and Arthur made quick work of taping Hollis's hands behind his back as Cobb started the car.

"Where are we going?" Cobb asked.

"Get out of here and go east," Arthur said. "Just east, nothing specific yet."

"Right."

Cobb apparently hadn't lost his knack for driving like a criminal, and he took off, the tires screaming as the car sped out of the garage and up onto the street.

Arthur grabbed the PASIV device.

"What do you plan to do with me?" Hollis asked. His voice still sounded even, unconcerned. 

Arthur didn't answer.

"You won't succeed, Arthur," Hollis went on. "If you put me under and try to do to me what you did to the others, with the thing inside your head, I assure you, you'll fail. I wrote the program; it's mine. And you won't be able to torture me for information up here, either."

Arthur didn't glance at him as he said, "You don't get to talk to me. And you certainly don't get any answers."

Hollis pretended he hadn't heard him. "I pulled your strings for years, Arthur. I know the inside of your head. I wiped your brain down for prints after every job you did for me; you've forgotten everyone at SomniCore, did you know that? It's why you don't remember me. But I remember you. You don't have the stomach for torture. It's what made you a good point man. And you'll fail as a killer. I didn't pick you because you were ruthless. I picked you because you weren't. Your blood is too warm for murder."

"You've got enough of it on your hands to know," Cobb said. Arthur wished he wouldn't. He would so much rather let Hollis babble into the void.

"Say you even find your partner," Hollis said. "He'll already be dead. And what will you do? Kill me? Kill the men who killed him too? I doubt you'd be able to do it. Physically or otherwise."

 _Little you know,_ Arthur thought, but refrained from saying. He rolled up his own sleeve and looked for a usable vein for the PASIV.

"Confucius said," Hollis went on, "that those who embark on a journey of revenge should dig two graves, Arthur."

Finally, Arthur had something to answer. "Oh, don't worry about that," he said, slipping the needle into his arm. "I've already dug about thirty."

He set the PASIV to two minutes and went under.

** ** ** **

Eames was aware that he was going east and that he was on Long Island outside of New York, or New York City or Manhattan or Bronx or something like that. An island, with lots of water. The van was cold, where he was trussed up in the back. His head ached, spun, swam. They'd shot him up with something again. 

They'd originally gotten hold of him right there in front of Hollis, as he tried to shield Arthur from their guns. He had taken one out with a roundhouse kick to the head, smashing teeth and bones. Another with the back of his elbow. A third, he'd crushed his windpipe like paper. The feel of it, and the sound, made him sick, but he didn't have a choice. They were so outnumbered, Cobb and Arthur were under; it wasn't playing fair. Eames liked fair. Unfair got him angry, in any situation.

But then one of them had pressed a gun to Arthur's head while he was deeply under—pressed it right up against the burn mark on his temple from when they'd shot him full of electricity—and then Eames had quit his struggling.

Hollis had instructed him to go quietly, that Cobb and Arthur would not be harmed while they still had something he needed.

Then they'd drugged him just to make sure he wouldn't resist once he was out of the room. The drug, however, had the added effect of sending him down into the dream, where he could access Arthur's thoughts, and now Cobb's, too. Thus, he had warned them of what they would face when they woke up.

So now he was in the back of this van with a few broken ribs, a concussion, and drugged to the teeth, but he knew which way they were going. 

He also knew that currently, he was a bargaining chip. Voices had come squawking over the radios of his captors, frantic and yelling about the escaped prisoners, and the kidnapping of Hollis at gunpoint.

 _Ahh, Arthur,_ he thought, with a smile.

More than that, he felt, strangely, that Arthur was behind him. Almost lurking right over his shoulder, like a shadow. That if he turned, he would see him there. In fact, he very nearly felt that Arthur was pulling him backwards. As if his long, strong hands were on his shoulders, urging him down.

_Eames._

With nothing else to do, he followed what he was certain was Arthur's voice. He fell backwards into the dream.

Closing his eyes felt like waking up, and when he opened them again, he saw a shadow. It was vague and human-shaped, indistinguishable but for two hazy, glowing blue lights.

"Ahh, Arthur," he said.

"Don't 'ahh Arthur' me," the shadow answered. "Where are you and what's going on? Brief me."

"In a van. Eastbound. There are five or six men here with me, and I don't know if they're bringing more in when we get to where we're going. They know you have Hollis, which is what is keeping them from shooting me in the head."

"How badly are you hurt?"

"Severely drugged, a little banged around but nothing that your tender ministrations won't mend later. And might I add how heartening it is to see your...well, your murderous, glowing eyes, at any rate."

"Yeah, well, I can't even see you, I can just hear you. What are their plans, do you know?"

"They'll pretend to trade me for Hollis, and then they'll kill us all anyway. They mentioned the word 'bodies' and they mentioned the word 'bridge.'"

Silence from Arthur. Eames could feel the tension in him. He suddenly remembered Arthur's nightmare, his terrified voice babbling about a bridge. _You're going to die and I won't get there in time._

But certainly there was no way for Arthur to know any such thing. Not unless...

"Arthur, you must have picked up on their plans via the remote dreamshare after they put their Glitch into you. That's all. It doesn't mean anything else. It's not as if you saw the future."

"I don't like that idea, but I can't think of any other ones," Arthur said. The glow of his eyes cast downwards, as if he was looking at the floor, thinking. "We've got Hollis and we're in his car, eastbound on the LIE. We just got onto the Island."

"Then you're about ten minutes behind me. They'll want to trade. Contact them, but don't let Hollis talk to his men. See if you can keep the element of surprise, yes?"

"What if they start to think that Hollis is dead already, and they just kill you? We have to give them something."

"Well... All right. Then do this: Let Hollis give them one word, from his cell phone. You tell him what he's allowed to say, so he doesn't try to give them a code. But make sure you're talking to someone in this van, and make them put me on the phone. We'll use a code for ourselves, yes?"

"Ninth Wave," Arthur said.

"What?"

"That's our code. You say 'Ninth Wave' to me, so I know it's you."

Eames smiled, thinking of his reproduction of the painting on Arthur's wall. "Right," he said. "Ninth Wave."

"Good," Arthur said. "I'm gonna try to rig it so that Hollis can't run. They'll probably try to do the same to you. Can you fight back, if you have to?"

"My hands aren't free and I am a bit sedated. But I'll be lucid and probably somewhat capable. And you, Arthur? You weren't doing so well when I saw you last."

"I'm all right. I need a fucking shower." He gave a small laugh, which made Eames feel a bit lighter in his chest. "And maybe a bottle of electrolytes."

"Arthur. I'll see you in a little while, yes? We've tangled with worse."

"Have we?" Arthur asked.

Eames didn't know how to answer that. Yes, he thought: they had tangled with worse. But they had never been this badly off, either. 

"We'll be fine," was all he said.

"Yeah," Arthur said. "I'm gonna wake up now and truss this bastard up. See you topside in a little while."

Eames heard the firing of a gun, and then Arthur blinked out of the dream. No 'goodbye' and no drawn-out, useless sentiments. Arthur was a master of keeping to time constraints. 

Eames took a few more minutes of rest before he felt the van shift into a turn. He knew it would all come down soon.

** ** ** **

"Right," Arthur said, reaching to the front seat where Cobb had thrown Hollis's length of rope. 

"Right what?" Cobb asked.

"We give Hollis's men the word that he's alive, and we trade him for Eames."

Hollis barked out a short, dark laugh. "You do realize it's not going to work like that, don't you?"

Arthur ignored him for now, and then dug his hand into Hollis's pocket, retrieving his cell phone. He went through his contacts and saw that they were similar to Arthur's own: no names attached to them.

"Tell me who to dial, whoever has Eames. I want to hear him. Then you're going to say one phrase to your contact, and I'll tell you what it's going to be. You say nothing else. Clear?"

Hollis sighed. "Whatever you say. Dial number three."

Arthur did, and waited. When the person on the other end picked up, there was silence.

"This is Arthur," he said. "I've got Hollis here with me and I'm willing to make a trade. I'm very reasonable until you give me cause not to be. Do you understand?"

"Put Hollis on," a man's voice said.  
 You don't give me orders," Arthur said. "You have a relatively obscure, freelance forger with you. I have the head of SomniCore, as well as access to all of his files, and everything in his mind. Put the forger on the line first."

He heard some shuffling, some muffled talking as the other man put his hand over the speaker, and a frustrated curse. He heard the phone being passed around. In the background, sounds of the van on the highway.

And then, Eames's voice, slurred, heavy, and rough: "Ninth wave."

The phone was clearly wrenched away from him and the man came back on the line. "What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means I fucked your mother," Arthur said, because although it was good to be thought of as reasonable and in control, it was equally necessary to be thought of as slightly mental. "Hold on for your boss." He pulled the phone away from his mouth and told Hollis, "Your exact words are: 'I'm alive and willing to trade.' If you say anything other than that, I'll shoot you in the foot. Okay?"

Hollis nodded. Arthur unholstered one of his guns and aimed it at Hollis's foot before putting the phone up to the side of his head.

"I'm alive and willing to trade," Hollis said, staring ahead, still smiling vaguely in the dim, rhythmic lights of the street. 

Arthur took the phone back. "I hope you got that, because that's all you're getting. Tell me where you are."

"There's a bridge off to the south of the next exit. It's deserted at this time of night. We'll do the trade there."

"Right," Arthur said. "Before you hang up, let me detail the situation to you. I know you're not planning on making a fair trade. I know you're going to make an attempt to kill me and my team anyway. But I also want you to know that the Glitch had some unexpected side effects that I've figured out how to exploit. I don't have to be asleep. And if you're kidding yourself that I'll be too weak to fight back or cause you any trouble, that will be a very big mistake on your part. I took out ten of you with a ketamine dart in my shoulder. Tell me you're hearing me."

"Affirmative," the man on the other end said.

"Good. This can go smoothly if you let it." 

He hung up, pocketed the phone, and started winding the rope into a noose.

"I don't know what makes you think you're calling the shots," Hollis said. "Your partner is in just as much danger as I am. More, actually."

"The fact that you're taped up in your own car," Arthur began, as he finished up the noose and pulled the loops tight. Then he slipped it over Hollis's head. "And, you know, that I'm going to hang you off the bridge. Things like that. Take the next exit and go south, Cobb."

Cobb nodded, stared ahead at the exit, and showed no outward reaction to anything that Arthur said. He knew that he made Cobb uneasy when he worked like this. Mal had liked him for it, though.

Hollis stared ahead as Arthur held onto the rope. 

"I might still shoot you in the foot," Arthur said.

Hollis kept smirking. Arthur looked out the window as Cobb turned the SUV onto the exit.

** ** ** **

Arthur always planned for things to go in entirely different directions than what he expected. Nothing surprised him, but at the same time, it was also impossible to know exactly how they were going to play out. He liked to remain fluid and keep all his options open.

He knew there would likely be a firefight, and he knew that Eames would need help at the end of all of this. He knew that there was a chance that more people would get on their tail and they'd have to ditch the car if they saw that happening, and make their way without one, somehow. He knew there would be injuries. 

But there was no way to prepare for headshots, there just wasn't. You could know they were coming, but you could not prepare for them.

He did prepare for almost everything else. As they pulled up to the beginning of the bridge—and there was that small, high moon that he remembered—he got out of the car, leaving Hollis behind and telling Cobb to watch him for a second. Then he used Hollis's cell to dial a number he had memorized the first time he saw it.

It went right to the answering service. It was 2:23 AM, after all. 

"Hey, it's me, it's, uhh, Scout," he said. "You said I could call you if I ran into trouble. I ran into it. I'm asking for a lot. I'm asking you to start driving to the Island the second you get this, with some bandages, some fluids, whatever you can scrape up. Just start driving and call this number when you get onto the Island. I'll tell you where to meet me. If I don't pick up, it'll be a man named Cobb. Ask him for the password phrase. It's 'a soul awake.' Got that? If you call back and no one picks up, then turn around and go home. You don't have to do this. It would help, but you don't have to. I just want you to know that. Right, so. Umm. Thanks."

He ended the call and waved Cobb out of the car, before going back in to pull Hollis out by the rope around his throat.

As they exited the car at the northern side of the bridge, headlights blazed to life at the south end. The bridge was a small one, spanning only about thirty feet. The water below was slushy with ice.

"Stay in the car," Arthur told Cobb.

"Arthur, I'm not..."

"I need you to be behind the wheel waiting for us. Please. Just stay here and keep it running. And take this." He handed Cobb the phone. "If it rings, pick it up. If it's a girl, she'll ask you for the pass phrase. You know what it is. It's in English, all right?" That, Arthur knew, was enough to clue him in that it had been Arthur's password for years, only in French. 

Cobb nodded.

"If we're done here, tell her where to meet us. If we're not, tell her to wait."

"Got it," Cobb said.

Arthur pushed Hollis ahead of him, still holding onto the rope. He pulled his gun free, too. 

"Do exactly as I tell you," he told Hollis. "You said I didn't have the stomach for murder. You're right. You can live through this if you do as I say. If you don't, then it won't be murder, will it?"

"You're far too confident," Hollis said.

"Step over the guardrail."

Hollis swiveled his head to look back at Arthur. Arthur nudged him in the face with the gun. It was the best idea he could come up with. Hollis's dangling body would be the perfect distraction, if he needed one. Finally, Hollis did as he was told. The ledge outside of the guardrail offered about a foot in width of walking space.

Silhouetted on the other side of the bridge, a small group of men came out of the van. Between two of them was the unmistakable shape of the man he knew best. He seemed able to walk fairly well. Arthur felt a moment's relief. They weren't dragging him, at least.

"Keep walking forward," Arthur told Hollis.

Hollis obeyed, and Arthur walked behind him, holding the rope tightly. When they were close enough to the center of the bridge, he told him to stop. Then he tied the rope securely to the guard rail. Arthur was a man of knots and bindings; he could do this part in his sleep.

All in all, it seemed an easy trade.

And then the other group opened fire.

True to his word, Arthur shoved Hollis off the bridge and left him to strangle slowly, while he dived to the ground and returned fire.

Two of the men came running towards him. He was at a disadvantage because their high beam lights were in his face. But they weren't heading for him, they were racing to save their boss, who was probably jerking like a fish on a line.

Eames full-body shoved one of the men flanking him, knocking him to the ground even with his hands tied. He fell too, as Arthur ducked and ran towards them. They were nothing more than moving shadows, yet he saw Eames, from the ground, leg-sweep the second guy. When he got him on the ground, he got both legs around the guy's neck and squeezed.

The first man got to his feet and tried to pull Eames off of the guy he was strangling with his legs. Arthur shot at him, and he must have hit him, because the guy spun and fell.

Arthur ran another few feet towards Eames, totally exposed in the light. He counted on the fact that two of the men were struggling to free Hollis, and the other two were incapacitated.

Eames got to his feet, staggering too close to the the guardrail. Arthur was a few yards away from him, his dream repeating visually in his head along with the details Eames had given him.

_I'm in a van with five men, maybe six._

Arthur only counted four.

This was because the fifth man had been hiding behind the open front door of the van. Arthur figured this out in that second, but didn't have a clear shot to fire at him.

He heard the shot, and he saw Eames's head snap back. He saw the accompanying spray of blood, and then Eames was toppling backwards over the guardrail.

This was no dream. But Arthur felt none of the panic he'd felt in the dream, no sense of impending death or loss. It wasn't the first time he'd had to go in after his teammate when things went fubar.

He just leapt over the guardrail and dived into the icy water after him.

 

** ** ** **

It felt more like the water hit him. It enveloped him, turning his muscles to lead, locking up all his joints. His vision went black and one thought kept repeating in his head: _Save your teammate._

Arthur kicked and flailed for a moment before remembering his training. This was not the first time he'd dived into icy water. Part of his training had been to swim into the ocean in February.

He got his shit together and dived under, searching with his hands in the dark. A few feet down and he had touched the river bed; it wasn't as deep as as he'd thought. He came up for a lungful of air. It burned his chest and throat with cold. Then he went back under, casting around for an arm, a leg, a scrap of clothing.

The moment before he needed to come up again, he grabbed hold of an arm, and pulled.

It felt stuck. Arthur surged against the resistance, adrenaline burning in his veins, pushing him forward. The arm came free, and Arthur kicked backwards, surfacing. 

The arm felt too light. He couldn't see clearly at first and he felt along the sleeve, lips trying to form the word "Eames" but too numb to do so. When his hand reached the shoulder, there was no body attached to it.

His brain wanted to stop there because he couldn't figure out where the rest of Eames had gone. Then he thought of the bridge, and how it seemed common knowledge among SomniCore goons that you went to the bridge to do executions, and you dumped the bodies, and then Arthur was flinging the rotting, severed arm away and yelling, "FUCK! FUCK!"

He went back under, seeking Eames out in the putrid, icy, corpse-infested water. He didn't know what he was touching: pieces of wood, or bone, or weeds or human hair, or snails or teeth.

Finally he grabbed a shoe, and then a leg. And then a hip and a waist and arm, and he pulled again, kicking and struggling against the weight. _Please,_ he thought, _just, please._

When he came up this time, he had Eames against his chest. He paddled backwards until his feet sank into marsh mud, and then he kept going.

The sudden gravity of being out of the water knocked him flat on his back. Eames fell on top of him, unresponsive. Arthur rolled them both over, picked him up again, and kept going until his legs gave out. 

He collapsed onto marsh grass as two headlights swung in his direction, blinding him. He was beyond worrying about the white van. If they had come to kill him, this was probably it. He turned Eames over onto his side. In the headlights, he could see the blood still oozing from the side of his head. 

"Arthur," Cobb called.

Arthur tried to answer _'over here'_ , but nothing came out.

Cobb got out of the car, leaving the headlights on ( _Foolish,_ Arthur thought, _unless he thinks they're all dead,_ ) and then he was splashing in the much and mire towards the both of them.

Cobb got to his knees in the freezing mud and pulled Eames away from him. Arthur felt too weak to resist. He couldn't see what Cobb was doing, couldn't even ask if Eames was alive. He heard some frantic slapping, some weak coughing, but everything was going black.

The lights came back on when Cobb slapped him and said, "Arthur, stay with me."

He tried to get up onto his hands and knees, but went facedown back into the mud.

"Come on, I need you to help me," Cobb said.

"Alive?" Arthur croaked.

"Not for long if we don't move. Come on. Help me, Arthur."

 _...Every time I've thought you've reached your limit, you reach down a little more..._ Eames's voice spoke, a memory. It hardly seemed possible that he'd said those words only two nights ago, at most. Eames, who had sought him out and found him before anyone else had. Who had come to claim him from the hospital as next of kin. _Kin_ Arthur thought, his head swimmy and hazy. Eames, who had taken him home and put him to bed, who'd been an outlet for his fear and loneliness and had put up with his shameless need that night, and had stayed awake with him, curling his warm hand around Arthur's ankle, waiting out his memory. Letting him get a moment or two of sleep. Eames, who had come down into the dream with him when he'd been dying on his kitchen floor, knowing that he would catch the mind-sickness, too.

And who was currently bleeding beside him in the marsh.

Arthur got up.

Cobb was pulling Eames to his his feet, but he would have to drag him the entire way to the car, because he was completely unresponsive. 

Arthur put his arm around Eames's waist and started walking.

"Thanks," Cobb said.

Arthur had no way to answer. His legs were moving, but everything else was numb.

** ** ** **

All was quiet from the bridge, but Cobb knew that at least one of the men up there was still alive. He'd seen Eames take a bullet, seen him fall into the water. Arthur, without hesitation, had jumped in after him. Cobb had not been surprised. Frightened, but unsurprised.

 _Eames is dead,_ he thought, and immediately after, _Fuck, I can't watch Arthur mourn,_ though he knew he would have to. Arthur had watched him mourn for years.

Two of the SomniCore men had dragged Hollis back up from where Arthur had hanged him from the bridge, and Cobb had fired at them. He was sure he'd hit one, and Hollis might already have been dead. But there was still at least one guy out there, and he'd probably call for back up.

There came a moment, kneeling in the marsh, where he had to consider that Eames was likely dead and they would have to leave without him, just to spare themselves. He had to make sure, and when he found a pulse, he tried to make quick work of getting any water out of his lungs before moving on. He heard the van on the bridge pull away. Eames started coughing.

Cobb got them both to the SUV that he had left running. Arthur was clumsily trying to help, but his focus was gone and his arms were almost useless. Trying to hurry, Cobb lifted Eames himself and threw him across the middle-back seat. Then he helped Arthur in after him. He stripped off his coat, and threw it over the back of the seat.

"You all right?" He had to make sure before he started driving. He had no idea where they would go.

Arthur didn't answer; he just started removing his shirt.

"Arthur!"

"Huh? Yes. Drive east." 

Cobb didn't have time to worry about Arthur struggling to stay alert, about Eames bleeding. If he didn't get them out of there, they'd all be executed anyway. He hurried to the driver's seat and got in, steering off the the back road and away from the bridge.

In the rear view mirror, Cobb saw too much movement, and then in the stark brightness of a street light, far too much of Arthur's skin. He wasn't stopping at removing his shirt, but was taking everything off.

"Hey," Cobb said. "Arthur, what the hell are you doing?"

"I'm lucid," Arthur said, though he sounded slurred and numb. "Clothes are icy. Filth. Corpses in the river."

Unable to tell if Arthur was hallucinating or not, Cobb turned around to get a closer look at him.

"Eyes on the road," Arthur snapped. "The river was a dumping ground for bodies. And these clothes are soaked." He disappeared behind the seat as he began stripping Eames, struggling with his drenched clothes.

Cobb thought of Arthur yelling "Fuck, Fuck!" in the water. He'd thought it was because of the cold, or that he had panicked when he hadn't found Eames. His stomach did a flip, when he understood the real reason.

"How is he?" he asked Arthur, trying to keep him engaged and on alert.

"Bleeding," Arthur muttered. "Not shivering. Blue."

"My coat's behind you," Cobb said. He already had the heat up as high as it would go, but he knew it wouldn't be enough for a long period of time.

Arthur yanked the coat down and stretched out full length over Eames, covering them both.

The phone in the pocket of the coat rang. Arthur was the one to pick it up.

"A soul awake," Arthur said, after checking the number. "Yeah, me, Scout. Not too good. On the LIE. Can you? Sorry about that. Make it up to you. Yes. Perfect. Twenty minutes. I'll try." He ended the call and collapsed back down. 

"You're getting someone to help you?" Cobb asked.

"Yeah. Um. Go the next ten exits and turn south."

"I need you to keep talking, Arthur."

"That's a myth," Arthur said. "That thing about staying awake. I don't have a concussion, anyway. Eames... Eames."

Cobb couldn't tell if he was trying to say something, or if he was just trying to wake Eames up.

"I'm so tired," Arthur said. His voice was muffled, as he he had dropped his head onto Eames's shoulder. 

"Just a little further," Cobb said. He wished it was true.

Ten exits down the road, he turned the SUV south, as Arthur had instructed. Arthur roused a bit at the motion and checked Eames again.

"How is he?" Cobb asked.

"Alive."

"Good. So what do we do now?"

"Pull into the rest area and wait."

The rest area was deserted, dark. What kind of interstate had no highway lights? The sky was clear and cold; Orion stood out in the southeast among clusters of stars as far as Cobb could see. He'd stayed in the desert with Mal once, before the kids had come along. The stars tonight reminded him of how they had looked then. He tried not to think about it as he listened to Arthur moving around behind him. 

He heard Eames murmur something quiet.

"Right here," Arthur said. And, "You're all right."

"What happened?" Eames asked. "Did I get shot?"

"A little," Arthur answered.

Arthur spoke quietly, with such gentleness as Cobb had never heard in his voice before. Sometimes, in some ways, Arthur reminded him of Mal. When he spoke French, his accent mimicked hers. They had been precise in the same way, sharp in the same way, and they had shared a similar chilliness and distance – which he had always thought went completely through Arthur, the way it had never done with Mal. She'd loved Cobb so completely. The center of her had been warm. He had never suspected the same of Arthur.

He realized then, perhaps belatedly, that he'd never really thought about who Arthur was outside of his work before. He guessed it was because Arthur never really talked much about anything other than his work, at least not in many years. He wanted to turn around, to say, _'I'm sorry if I ever failed you,'_ but that wasn't even the truth. 

It was Mal whom he had failed. It was just that Arthur had never actually blamed him for that. Arthur was, as Mal had always said, a fine man. One who could hang a villain off of a bridge without glancing back at him, but a fine man nonetheless.

After about ten minutes, a car pulled up behind them. The driver left it running, and left the lights on. Arthur pulled himself up in the middle-back seat and looked out the back.

"Wait here," Cobb said. He got out of the car, and _fuck_ it was cold out here. 

The girl was holding onto a cell phone which was open and on. One finger hovered over a key that Cobb was sure was the last "1" of "911."

"A soul awake?" Cobb said, holding his hands up. "Arthur is in the car. We don't need anything from you other than what he asked. He's sorry he had to call you out all this way. I'll just stand here if you want to get something out of your car."

She hesitated, staring at him.

"I swear I won't move, okay?"

"Let me see Arthur," she said. 

"I'm right here," Arthur's voice called out from the window that he had just opened. His hand followed it, briefly, waving.

"Come on out," she said.

"I"m naked," he said.

The girl looked at Cobb, suspicious. "Why is he naked?" she asked.

"He jumped into a river to rescue his partner. Their clothes were wet, so he took them off."

She looked at once exasperated, impressed, and incredulous. She flailed her hand, the one not holding the phone. "I _bathed_ you," she called back to him. "It's nothing I haven't seen."

"Jesus Christ," Arthur said. "I'm not coming out, I'll freeze to death. Come to the window?"

She relaxed a little, but didn't put the phone down. Smart girl, Cobb thought. "Let me get the stuff you asked for." She pointed to Cobb. "I don't know you so... so you stay there."

Cobb held both hands higher. "I will."

She backed away, to her car. Opened the door and pulled out a cardboard box with one hand, keeping her eyes on him. Then she took the box over to the window where Arthur was peering out, on the other side of the car.

"I had to make sure it was really you," she said. "Open the door, let me in."

Arthur relented, and she climbed in beside him. Cobb went around the front of the car to the passenger's side, carefully avoiding crossing behind her and frightening her, and not making any moves that would suggest he was about to drive away. She still looked over the seat at him, her eyes wide and cautious.

"Dom Cobb," Arthur said. "He's a professor, we work together."

"Your memories came back," she said. But before Arthur answered, she caught sight of Eames and said, "Oh my god, your husband."

Cobb refrained from repeating the word with an air of surprise. If that was their con, then it was none of his business. Eames seemed to have dropped off into unconsciousness again.

"He got clipped," Arthur said. "He fell into the water."

"He needs a hospital," she said.

"Emma, listen to me," Arthur said. "The hospital that they were shipping me off to? They're behind this."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?" He turned his head towards Cobb and showed her the burn mark on the side of his head. "Do you know what that is?"

"Of course I..." She reached out and lightly touched the mark. "Oh, shit. What are they? What is this all about?"

"It's a program that used to be a military project. Then the government got hold of it, then a megacorporation, and then it went underground and became illegal, but the megacorp popped back up. I can't explain it all and honestly, I'm exhausted and freezing and my partner needs help. I'm sorry, I wish I could do better."

"You have to go to the authorities to stop them," she insisted. Righteous, and piteously naïve. "There has to be someone you can go to."

"I _am_ the man people usually go to," Arthur said. Which wasn't strictly true, Cobb thought, but was true enough for now. "And I failed, this time. I lost my team, I got caught, I almost got killed and I almost got my partner killed because he came looking for me."

She stared at him in silence for a moment, unsure of what to say. Then she turned her attention back to Eames.

"The wound doesn't look too bad," she said, "but I'm worried about the cold and about infection. I nabbed some antibiotics for you just in case. I'm glad I did. I can try to clean this up..."

"I can do that," Arthur said. "I don't want you hanging around too long. The people who did this might know where we are. I need you to hurry up and get back home, or away from here at least. Okay?"

She nodded, her eyes wide. Then she clambered over Arthur and back outside of the car. Before she turned to leave, Arthur grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back to him. He pressed his lips against her forehead, holding her there for a few seconds. Then he whispered "thanks" and let her go.

"Sure," she said, dazed, backing away, but with a small smile. "Sure, Scout. No problem. Umm. Fix your... fix your coat."

Arthur glanced down to his lap, where the coat he'd draped over himself had slid down. "Oh!," he said. He smiled enough to show dimples, and in the dim light of the car, Cobb even saw him blush. "Sorry."

"Take care of yourself," she said. "Well, all of you. Take care of yourselves." 

Cobb slid over into the driver's seat, and Arthur gave her a last nod of thanks and got back into the car. Again he stretched himself out over Eames. 

"Who?" Eames said.

"A friend," Arthur told him.

"Where to?" Cobb asked.

"Keep going east until I tell you to stop. I have a place where we can crash."

Cobb waited until the girl's car had pulled out of sight, going west, before leaving the rest area and heading east.


	6. Chapter 6

First came the muzzy light from behind his closed eyes. Shortly after that, the sound of drapes being pulled closed and a whispered apology.

 _Arthur_ , he thought, as the light faded. 

His voice, the smell of his shampoo, but different from the last time. He wanted to call out to him, and almost tried to. But it was so dark, so warm where he was, he just wanted to float away on it.

If it was Arthur and not a dream, then he would come to bed in just a moment or so. Any minute now, he would feel the other side of the bed dip, Arthur getting between the covers and fidgeting until he got comfortable, until his mind shut down enough to sleep.

But none of that happened. Instead there came the sound of a door shutting quietly, and then silence once again.

Or near silence, anyway. Eames could swear he heard the ocean. It was a cold sound, but warmth enveloped him, seemed to seep into his bones, coming from the inside.

The next time the light came, it flicked on. He felt someone staring. Then darkness behind his eyelids again, and the sound of the closing door.

Now he was getting frustrated, and he also had to use the bathroom. Eames forced himself awake. He tried to sit up in a foreign bed, in a foreign room, but nausea and pain swatted him back down like an insect. He took a few deep breaths and waited for the throb in his head to pass. The room wasn't entirely dark and he took a look around. It was a spacious room, with a high ceiling and a wooden ceiling fan, which was off. Lush curtains were drawn over what he assumed to be floor to ceiling windows, or double doors. 

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and put his feet down on a hardwood floor. When he tried to move forward, he almost toppled an IV stand.

This was certainly no hospital. And he could barely remember what had come before this. The van, the bridge, Arthur's glowing eyes (had he imagined that?) and Arthur's silhouette, dodging bullets. Maybe he'd dreamed all of it. He didn't know. And he had no idea where he was now, or what might be around the next corner.

But the need to pee was urgent, so he took the IV stand and made his way to a door to his right. It proved to be a bathroom, lit by a seashell shaped nightlight. He knew better than to turn on the room light; knew it would burn the hell out of his eyes and make his head want to explode.

He went to the toilet and had a pee, looking hazily around the bathroom. Marble, heated floors, beautiful tilework, high-end sink, full-length jacuzzi tub. Just where the fuck was he?

As he finished up and went to wash his hands, he looked into the mirror. It was too dark to make out the details, but he could see well enough that he'd been through some serious shit this time. His head was bandaged all the way around, and one eye was swollen nearly shut. 

Eames jerked back from the mirror, remembering the bullet. There had been no question in his mind at the time that he was fucking dead. He'd been shot in the head, he'd felt himself falling off the bridge. Cold, and then panic, and then nothing. Nothing until Arthur, leaning over him.

 _Did I get shot?_ And then Arthur, in the cold, dark space. _A little._

"Christ," he tried to say, but no sound came out of his throat.

Aching all over now, he made his way back to the bed. He'd planned on looking around at his surroundings, but now he'd remembered taking a head shot, and the pain was starting to catch up to him. He prioritized getting horizontal on purpose before gravity did it for him. He felt relatively safe. No one seemed to be hunting him.

He made it to the bed and fell onto his side.

When the light came back, this time it was softer, muted, more natural. Cobb was standing by the drapes, parting them just a little.

"You're up," Cobb said.

"Arthur?" Eames asked. _Is he alive?_ he couldn't bring himself to say.

"Said he'd be back soon. That was yesterday, but Arthur's 'soon' and normal people's 'soon' are two different things. He's all right. He left you a note, actually."

Eames turned onto his back and tried to prop himself up on his elbows. When that succeeded, he went further and hoisted himself up against the headboard. His eyes began to slowly adjust to the light through the small part in the curtains. The light outside looked grey and misty. He gestured for Cobb to open the drapes.

Cobb did, revealing double French doors that led out to a small deck over a snow-covered beach. The Atlantic ocean rolled in dark, foamy waves under the deserted dunes. Rain tapped against the glass in staccato. He wondered if it would be enough to melt the snow. He wished for Arthur's presence.

"The note?" he asked, now that there was enough light to see.

Cobb dug in his pocket and brought a slip of notebook paper over to the bed. His lips hinted at a smile that did nothing to lighten the heaviness in Eames's chest. 

Eames unfolded the paper and it took him three times looking at it to actually understand. It was a hand-drawn heart, in black ink, taking up all of the page. In the center of it, in big letters, it read:

**"Arthur  
+  
C4"**

"He said he had some unfinished business," Cobb said.

Eames folded the note and put it on the dark-wood table beside the bed. He didn't find Arthur's cheekiness so amusing this time. 

"He went back by himself," Eames said, staring out the window.

"Well, with a case of C4 blocks, as he said. A backpack full of whatever gear he carries on things like this. And the SUV."

"I see," Eames said. "When? And _why_?"

"As to when, yesterday. As to why, unfinished..."

"Yes, I know that part, Cobb," Eames said. "But _why_? Why wouldn't he wait for me to help him?"

Cobb sat on the edge of the bed. "Because you got shot in the head, Eames," he said. "And because he has to make sure Hollis isn't going to come after him again. He wants to help his team, too, the ones he worked with last. He ties up loose ends. You know that. He hung Hollis off the bridge, but we weren't sure if he was really dead."

"He hung him?"

"After Hollis's men started shooting. Arthur had a noose around Hollis's neck for security and when the firefight started... you know. So he has to make sure. And he also had to get rid of the car, in case they were tracking it. If they were, then they'd probably show up here soon and, obviously, he can't let that happen."

Part of Eames felt comfortable with Arthur taking care of the whole thing, finishing the last leg of this tour alone. Another part of him felt keenly that Arthur's luck had stretched as far as it could go.

"You might be three and three," Cobb said.

"Huh?" Eames looked back at him, confused.

"With the life-saving thing. A few days ago you were neck in neck with two. Now it's three and three."

"Two and three," Eames said. "He clearly saved me this time, I think?"

"He jumped into the water after you, yeah. He pulled you out. But don't forget, you went into the dream with him while he was dying. You knew you were going to get infected."

"He said he was only dying for a second," Eames said, smiling slightly.

Cobb's look, however, was darker. "It wasn't a second," he said. "You went under so you didn't see what I saw. He died down there. You went in and pulled him out."

"You're lying." The idea of it didn't make Eames feel fantastic or heroic. Just vaguely ill. 

"I'm not."

He leaned back against the bed and tried very hard not to think about how close it had been, for both of them this time. They had to stop all this running, soon. It was getting closer every time.

"He also went back for the machine," Cobb said, after giving Eames a moment to think. "The glitch machine, thing. Whatever it was. To get this infection out of all of our heads."

"Ah. Yes, you probably can't work with it."

Cobb shrugged. "Mine isn't as severe. His is the worst. Yours, second worst obviously. But it still connects you two in dreams, without the PASIV."

The jolt of understanding hit him then. That if Arthur didn't find a way to undo this, they would be stuck like this. Doomed to show up randomly in each other's dreams—in their private spaces, in their off time—without any control over it.

Cobb said, "Mal and I would have kept it." He was smiling sadly. "I think that's why we failed. We were obsessed with each other. I mean, it was love. And there was nothing like it. But the obsession, that was, that was a big part of it." He looked worn by grief again, sadness that was older and almost a comfortable part of him now. He looked a way that Eames never wanted to feel. 

"I'm not obsessed with Arthur," he said. "Nor he with me."

"I know," Cobb said. "That's what I never understood before. Why you separate, how you can come and go so easily. You're right, you know. It works for you."

 _If we stay alive,_ Eames thought, but didn't say. Cobb was the wrong man to say that to.

"Is this Arthur's house?" Eames asked. He couldn't fathom Arthur buying a beach house on the Atlantic that looked as if it cost well over a million American dollars.

"No. He says he did some work for this family and they let him use it in the winter. And I guess he's tight with the cops around here too."

"Wow." _There's so little I know about Arthur,_ Eames thought. He liked it that way, these little surprises. 

Music blared to life, startling them both. Cobb looked confused, alarmed, glancing around the room. Then he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and stared at it. 

_'You may be right, I may be crazy...'_ Billy Joel yelled from the phone. Cobb scowled at it, and then smiled, annoyed but good-natured.

There was no need to say that it was Arthur.

"I hate when you change my ring tone," Cobb said, "especially when you do it without even being here. It's an invasion of privacy, or just a general lack of consideration. You scared the hell out of me."

Eames had to smile at that. If Arthur was out there remotely fucking around with Cobb's cell phone, he probably had some time on his hands and was fine.

"Where are you?" Cobb asked. Then, "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Umm, I have no idea Arthur, you know this place better than I do, you tell me. Okay, that doesn't give me much time. And in case you forgot, you took the one car. Oh? I see. Keys in the mudroom, right. Right. I'll be right down. Oh, Arthur? Why Billy Joel?"

Eames heard Arthur laugh over the phone and then answer something indistinguishable, something he couldn't make out of the the sound of the rain.

"Well, it's appropriate," Cobb said, glancing at Eames. "Right, be right down." Then he disconnected the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. "I have to go pick him up."

"From where?"

"A train station that he's already at," Cobb said. "He said it would take about twenty minutes for me to get there. He would have called sooner but he was having fun hacking my phone."

"He seems all right?" 

"I guess so," Cobb said. "He didn't tell me the whole thing. So you'll be all right while I go get him?"

"Yes, of course," Eames said. "I'll be fine."

"Right. Try to get some sleep."

Cobb left the house a few minutes later. It would be probably over an hour before he would return, and Eames didn't feel like getting some sleep. Instead, he took the time to ease himself out of bed and to get used to being upright without toppling over. The IV attached to him was nearly empty anyway, so he unhooked it from his arm and pressed on the wound with his thumb until he found some gauze and tape in the drawer next to the bed.

That done, he wandered the beach house, looking at things that were not Arthur's. Or perhaps some of them were; he just didn't know. The floors were wood and marble, the rooms spacious, with high ceilings. The décor went for high-end beach-comber, with seashell and lighthouse motifs. 

He went down the stairs into an open great-room, with a large-screen TV dominating one brick wall. There was a stack of DVDs, but nothing that looked to Arthur's tastes – that he knew of. There were no video game systems, no games or any of the other stuff he'd seen in Arthur's apartment.

The image came to him of Arthur's ruined home in the Bronx, just before they'd dragged him out to the van. Arthur lying on his kitchen floor, surrounded by the broken glass of his coffee pot, and the shredded pieces of the life he'd tried to build. They'd taken the hard drive out of his computer and then had destroyed those stupid video game systems that he was so fond of, looking for other, hidden drives. And maybe they found something, too. Or maybe they had just found saved games that Arthur had spent some time on. He didn't know.

Thinking of those stupid games, of the painting on the floor, and of Arthur's guitar smashed to pieces in the corner, Eames was suddenly angry. Hatefully angry at these bad, malicious people who kept tearing down the things that Arthur had tried to make permanent. This was, of course, why Eames never tried for permanence himself. But Arthur, bless him, had made a small effort, in a little, private apartment in New York. And they'd taken that from him. Those stupid, pointless game systems that Arthur liked – for some reason, that's what got to him the most. He hoped that Arthur had destroyed all of those people.

Eames kept walking around the empty house, checking the pantry for tea. There was some, and it was the good kind, so he put the water on. He gazed out the back windows on the ground floor while he waited for the kettle to whistle. 

Perhaps this house was luxurious in the summer, when Arthur was not here, with the sun streaming in through open windows and the surf beating the white sand. But in the dead of winter, as rain melted the mounds of snow and pattered against the windows, with its darkwood floors lit only by misty, grey light, Eames found it beautiful. Some things looked lovelier in the middle of the darkness.

** ** ** **


	7. Chapter 7

" _Now think of all the years you tried to  
find someone to satisfy you  
I might be as crazy as you say  
If I'm crazy then it's true  
that it's all because of you,  
and you wouldn't want me any other way.  
You may be right, I may be crazy  
but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for  
It's too late to fight, it's too late to save me,  
You may be wrong for all I know but you may be right..._"

Billy Joel played over the radio of Hollis's car as Arthur pulled it into a deserted parking lot in the wee fucking hours. He thought maybe he liked that song. And anyway, he'd just gotten to the Western end of Long Island, so it was right to be listening to Billy Joel talking about being crazy. Billy Joel was from Long Island. He'd heard that somewhere.

He had not been wrong in thinking that they would eventually get around to tracking the car. This probably meant that Hollis was still alive, too. So Arthur had taken the car to this depressing lot, that had not even been plowed, and set up just enough C4 on the underside of it before making his way a safe distance from it.

He waited maybe 45 minutes, freezing his ass off in black clothes he had "borrowed" out of his somewhat-host's closet (he would replace them – it was the honorable thing to do,) and a black raincoat he'd found hanging in the mudroom. He hadn't had time to do his hair the way he liked it when he was working, and the wind whipped it into his eyes. Very annoying.

Eventually the handful of goons showed up, at least three cars of them. They were completely obvious in their cautious surrounding of the dark car. They all came in close, guns drawn, and crowded into a tight circle.

Arthur pressed the button. The car, the surrounding cars, and everyone around them, lit the sky in flames. He was far enough away that he didn't get hit with any shrapnel, but close enough to feel the heat.

The heat was nice, because it was so fucking cold.

He looked at his watch. It was 4:45 AM and now he had to get on the Drunk Train to the city. He hated changing at Jamaica.

It was terrifying, how easy it was to get on a train with a pack full of explosives. Arthur was glad that he was sane. He was profoundly glad that most people were, in fact, sane and mostly harmless. This shit was so easy. Massive destruction was one of the simplest acts in the world to commit. Anyone could do it at any time, and so few people actually did. Arthur considered himself an optimist.

And a pragmatist. He was angry at Hollis, that was true. But anger didn't drive him to close the loose ends. That was just being thorough. He had no plans to torment anyone. What Hollis had said was true: he really didn't have the stomach for torture. Cold-blooded murder just wasn't in him. 

Great destruction though, as a means to an end? That he could do. He had asked Hollis so often in the days since he'd taken him, to be reasonable. Arthur reminded himself of that. He'd given them more than their fair share of chances. None of them had taken him up on his repeated offers of mercy.

At dawn, he took a cab to the middle of nowhere, in case anyone was still following him. That was unlikely, but it was good to be cautious. It was beginning to rain lightly, but it was still cold. Arthur started to walk the streets of New York, taking alleys and back roads. It was amazing that only days ago, he couldn't remember his name, but he had still memorized the grid that was this city. He walked until his face was numb, until his thighs felt shaky with cold. No one bothered him. His backpack looked like any backpack in the world. It could have had legal papers, books, the Times, and a bagel stuffed into it for all anyone else knew.

He knew where the SomniCore building was; it was easy enough to find. Getting into it while they were on high alert, though; that was another thing entirely.

The building stood on the outskirts of Brooklyn, in a sparse part of nowhere, looking for all the world like an abandoned refinery. He'd never seen it by daylight. It was ugly, concrete, two storeys and badly maintained on the outside. That was probably on purpose. It lay sunken between two hills, in a valley that was probably hideous and sparse in the spring and summer, but looked strangely intriguing surrounded by snow. Like an episode of X Files, he thought.

He took out his binoculars. A handful of guards patrolled all around the building, but not a lot. Most of them were probably out looking for him. When they discovered the SUV had been blown up, they would probably spend a few hours trolling the nearby areas, assuming he hadn't gotten far.

A small power station hummed on the other side of the hill. High-voltage warning stickers were plastered all over it. This could only be the station that powered the SomniCore building. 

Arthur made his way towards it in the cover of the snowy hill. From his backpack, he took a pair of wire cutters and cut through the chain locking the door shut. Then he slipped inside the small room that buzzed with electricity, and waited.

Arthur had, in fact, brought a bagel in his backpack. Also a thermos of coffee. He sat down in the power station and ate, thinking of where Hollis might be. In the building, probably. Definitely not out searching for him with the others. Arthur had scared him into a fox hole, maybe even severely injured him.

It was a long wait, but Arthur was patient. He'd watched parked cars for hours in his work.

At sundown, he cut the power to the SomniCore building. Then he cut the generator behind it. Any alarms, any spotlights that might have flared to life, never got the chance. Under the cover of darkness, he slipped past the frantic guards and into the building.

He couldn't see his way in total darkness, but a few goons had their big stupid flashlights out, casting long, shaky lines of light and shadow all over the walls. Arthur made his way into the basement.

It took him about a half an hour to plant all the bars of C4 that he had left. Then he came back up the stairs.

Arthur used his own flashlight and followed the various shouts of direction and panic. He found Hollis in one of his own hospital beds, a light bandage around his throat, an oxygen cannula in his nose. _Oh, come on,_ Arthur thought. _Man up. Eames got it so much worse than you._

Still, Hollis was aware enough to know who was in the room with him. His eyes held no fear, but acceptance. As if he knew Death and understood it was his time. Arthur locked the door behind him.

"I need the machine," he said.

"But you're going to kill me anyway," Hollis croaked.

"Yes. Everyone here, probably. But that's an important piece of equipment."

"And if I say no? You won't torture me."

"I could extract it from you," Arthur said. "It would take me a couple of minutes. I actually have a couple of minutes, and you won't like the extraction, after what you did to my head." He pulled up a curved, plastic chair. In the dark, he could make out the various instruments in the room. Syringes, restraints, a PASIV. The ECT device they had used on him. He thought of Eames falling off the bridge. 

Arthur reached for the PASIV.

"I'll take you there," Hollis said. He removed the oxygen cannula and eased himself off the bed.

"Good. I'll just follow you. I will have a gun behind you, though. All right?"

"I understand. We don't have far to go."

Hollis wasn't wearing a hospital gown; instead he wore plain white scrubs. Gowns weren't for jarheads like Hollis. He led Arthur not out into the hall, but into an adjoining room. This room looked like storage for hospital supplies, but ones that didn't belong in hospitals that helped a person. In the near dark, Arthur could only make out gleaming instruments behind glass doors. 

Hollis squatted down to a metal safe.

"If you pull anything out of there but the device..." Arthur began.

"You don't have to threaten me," Hollis said, opening the safe. "You may not understand this, but I know it's time for me to die. I remember you as a young man." 

This bit of commentary seemed apropos to nothing, as Hollis drew the familiar little metal box out of the safe. He stood and turned to face him again. Arthur waited for him to go on. 

"You were the best," Hollis said. "You and Cobb, actually. But you, Arthur. When I sent my people after you this time, I knew we would either have you back at our mercy, or that we would fall under your hand. You would either be my dragon, or my death."

"You're an idiot," Arthur said. "Tell yourself whatever you want. Dragons, death, whatever. This isn't fate or destiny or any of that bullshit. I asked you not to fuck with me. That's all I wanted. You did anyway. It's not some kind of epic legend that's going on here."

"You never did have much vision, though," Hollis said. "May I ask what you'll do with my machine? It's a beautiful piece of work."

To this, Arthur gave a moment's thought. "I'm going to have Cobb and probably his specialists take a good long look at it before using it. It could take a few weeks. Once they figure it out—and I know they will—I get this thing out of my head. Then Eames, and then whoever else you used it on."

"It's going to be studied?" Hollis asked.

"It has to be."

Hollis smiled, gruesome and ecstatic. "Will I get credit?"

Arthur thought of the arm he had pulled out of the river. He thought of his team, the ones they'd made him forget about. Of Eames's warm hand on his ankle, and Eames falling into the icy water.

"Probably not," Arthur said, and shot him in the forehead.

He tucked the machine into his mostly empty backpack and made it out of the building just as they got their generator back up. He looked like probably everyone else around there as he jogged past the running guards and techs and interns, or whatever the hell they were.

When he got to the top of the hill, he dug the detonator out of the zipped inside pocket of his backpack and pressed the button.

The SomniCore building didn't explode so much as it just crumbled, slowly. It went from the bottom down, like the earth was eating it. He watched it for a few minutes.

The dust and years of chemical mayhem rolled towards him like a wave. Arthur pulled his sweater up over his nose and mouth and started to jog away. He didn't want to inhale that shit.

On his way back to the train station, he stopped at a deli to get a sandwich. It was pretty stale, but he'd had a long day and it still tasted good. He bought a bottle of water, too. A really pretty girl smiled at him from behind the counter and told him that he had a smudge of dirt on his forehead. Blushing, he thanked her and wiped it away. She gave him her phone number on the receipt.

Arthur took care of a few things while he was in the city. He did a little shopping. He bought three new phones, one for Eames, Cobb and himself, and a DVD to watch tomorrow in case Eames wasn't up yet. He picked Alice In Wonderland, the one with Johnny Depp, because it looked entertaining.

He took the subway to Chinatown and bought a knife with a dragon etched on it. It was really cheesy, but he couldn't deny that he wanted it. He went to a magic shop and bought a stupid, cheap top hat, the kind you'd pull a rabbit out of. He did all of these on different credit cards with different names on them.

It was best to stay local, he thought, in case any stragglers were still gunning for him. He didn't want to lead them back to Eames and Cobb. So he went back to his old, trashed apartment. He didn't have his key, but the door was still open. Nothing else had been touched in his absence.

Eventually, he would have to come back here and clean up. Pay his security, too. In the meantime, he went back outside and took Eames's belongings out of the back of the trunk of his stolen car: his first responder kit, the portfolio with his traveling workstation, and the bag of clothes that he'd bought for Arthur.

He took the items back up to his apartment and looked again through the clothes. That was thoughtful of Eames, to buy those things for him. Looking at them again with his memory returned, he understood how carefully Eames had chosen them, even in his mad rush.

Putting the clothes aside, Arthur took a walk through his defiled apartment. The destruction of items didn't mean too much to him. He could buy whatever he wanted. Only a few things were irreplaceable. One of those things was the _Ninth Wave_ painting by Eames. That one really pissed him off. Sure, Eames could paint him another, and probably would, if asked. But Arthur had stolen this one from him and kept it for years. It held unexpected nostalgia for him. He picked up the torn canvas from the floor and rolled it up, setting it into one of his bags. Well, he would keep it anyway, torn or not.

He found Cobb's overnight bag still in the kitchen. It had been turned inside out, but his clothes and sundry were still intact. He folded them hastily and shoved them back into the bag.

Then he retrieved his actual external hard drive from its real hiding spot: inside a box set of Bruce Lee movies. He put that into the bag, too. Everything else he would just have to do without.

He took a quick shower (they had left the glass shower door intact at least,) and then got a few hours of sleep on his ripped up sofa, his gun clasped loosely in his hand on his chest.

In the morning, he took a cab back to Jamaica and got right on the LIRR. He had to switch at Bethpage. 

_I wonder if Eames is mad that I went alone,_ Arthur thought, letting the train lull him. But if he was, then it was an unfounded and useless anger. He knew that Eames trusted him to get the job done. Arthur was not reckless. And this venture, this tying up of loose ends, had not been a reckless thing. This had been an organized attack. Quickly organized, but organized nonetheless, and flawlessly executed. He had to give himself credit for it.

Arthur was in perfect control and was definitely not one of the crazy people on the train that citizens had to fear.

He played around with his new phone, downloaded some ring tones, hacked into Cobb's stolen one, (which was actually Hollis's,) and switched the ring tone to a new one.

_'You may be right, I may be crazy,_ ' Billy Joel snarled.

Yes, that was a good song to listen to as he rode back out east on the train.

** ** ** **

Cobb pulled up beside the small, easy-to-miss train station situated behind a cluster of quaint stores. Arthur was waiting under the shelter of the station, collars pulled up against the rain and mist, arms bogged down with bags and luggage, and Eames's portfolio. His backpack hung strapped across his shoulders. He looked for all the world like an art college student home for the weekend.

Until he came closer, and Cobb could discern the marks of his true life: thin scars here and there, the still-fresh burn mark on the side of his head, and the fading bruises under his eyes. Misty, filtered light flattered Arthur, but Cobb saw through it, and the lingering scent of explosives from his backpack did nothing to dispel the image. He wondered sometimes how much influence he'd had over Arthur during his life. If he'd had a hand in creating this person. He was proud of Arthur for his strength, but, as a father, a small part of Cobb mourned for him, too. 

"All set," Arthur said, stepping over a ledge of blackened snow by the curb. "I got the machine. It's for you, Cobb. I mean, we need it to undo the Glitch. But it's for you and your school to use. Or to destroy. Whatever you think."

"Arthur, listen," Cobb said. "I, umm. I need to get back to the kids." He couldn't help feeling shame at saying so, at such a bad time. But, damn it, he couldn't be away for too long. They were his first priority. Arthur was second to them, now that they he was confirmed to be alive and would likely remain so. "And I'm going to need some time with this machine to figure it out. It won't be overnight."

"I know," Arthur said. "That's why I'm giving it to you. If you think about it." He sounded as if this was not a surprise to him. He thrust the machine out with both hands, forcing Cobb to take it from him.

When they got into the car, Arthur took the wheel this time.

"Arthur," Cobb said, fidgeting with the machine in his lap, "what I'm saying is that I got a call. From Tokyo."

Arthur turned to him as he pulled away from the curb, concerned. His hands tightened on the wheel. "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, it's fine. Word about this whole thing got back to Proctus Global. Saito's flying me out today. The kids are there, so there's that, and he wants to know what's going on. I said I'd go."

"Good," Arthur said. "I'm glad everything's fine. What does Saito want to know?"

"The Glitch made its way out there. He wants to fund a study of it. He wanted me, and now that I have the machine, I'd probably be able to work through it pretty fast."

"Excellent," Arthur said. He took a left turn and started heading west instead of east. "Then you can get this thing out of my head even quicker. The sooner the better, Cobb. I can't have random people wandering into my dreams and I can't keep destroying everyone who does. And me and Eames keep meeting up in our sleep. It's really disturbing." He sounded completely annoyed. "So, what's the problem?"

"Well..." Now that Cobb thought of it, it sounded weak. "I just wanted to make sure you and Eames were going to be all right. I don't want to run out on you. But it feels like that's what I'm doing."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "If going to your kids when we're both fine, and then hurrying up and finding a way to cure this _thing_ that's inside all of us is 'running out on us,' then get the fuck out, seriously. I want this thing out of my head. Can Saito get a plane to a private airport? There's one about twenty minutes from here. Rich people with private jets use it. He could probably even buy out security so you could breeze through with the machine."

Cobb unfolded a piece of paper that he had written on in haste, pulled off to the side of the road as he spoke to Saito's connection. "Gabreski?" he read. "That's what he said."

"I have your overnight bag with me," Arthur said, smiling. "I can get you there in twenty minutes and be at the beach house in time for a late lunch."

Cobb smiled. It felt as if a tight cord had unwound from his chest. "Arthur, you're still brilliant. I can never understand how you manage to get every last detail done."

"Don't lay it on too thick, Cobb," Arthur said, smiling nonetheless.

"I feel like I need to repay you." _Not for driving me to the airport,_ Cobb thought. _But for everything._ He couldn't say it, though. He was awful at saying things like this, and Arthur didn't want to hear them anyway.

"What the fuck," Arthur said. "You came to help me when you saw me on the news. You shot someone for me. You drove us all the way out here. And now you're going to fix this and make sure it doesn't happen again. I'm pretty sure you don't need to repay me."

"You know why," Cobb said. He didn't know if Arthur actually did understand. Because to Arthur, everything he did just fell under his job description. He didn't require extras.

The rain was relentless by the time Arthur got him to the airport. It was a small one, private, and Arthur parked the car, took an umbrella from under the seat, and went around to the trunk to get Cobb's stuff from the trunk. Cobb followed him around, feeling unsure and unsteady, the way he never used to feel around Arthur. They weren't partners anymore. This was something different.

Arthur turned to him and beckoned him closer. Cobb wondered why at first, until Arthur reached out with the umbrella, holding it over both of them. Businesslike, he handed Cobb his overnight bag.

"So what I can do," Arthur said, still shielding them both from the rain, "I can get in touch with the university where you're teaching and see if they have anything on this. They might have a lead on my last team. And if you or Saito hear anything about that, keep me in the loop, okay? While we're waiting for you to figure out how to undo this, me and Eames..."

He talked on, the umbrella in one hand, his free hand gesturing emphatically and drawing abstract shapes to illustrate his points. Under the shared umbrella, Cobb was close enough that he could once again smell explosives on him, and debris. Arthur smelled like violence, like the kind of man that Cobb would never let near his children. He felt repulsed by this and wanted for a second to shrink away, because this was not his life anymore. His reaction shamed him. He'd spent years relying on Arthur's skill in getting things done. It was, in part, that skill that allowed him to even be with his kids.

Arthur had given him years of service, and now Cobb wanted to run from him. At the same time, he felt an indescribable fondness for Arthur. The kids were a part of Mal, something of her that he could cling to. Yet, Arthur was a part of Mal, too – because she had loved him. And because Arthur had been so loyal to her, and then had transferred his fearless loyalty to Cobb.

"And so," Arthur went on, "A: first scenario, we fly out to Tokyo once we're ready to travel and join you there, or B: second scenario, we wait unti you're..."

Cobb cut him off by slinging an arm around Arthur's shoulders and pulling him close. He tried to make it a manly hug, one-armed, with back-slapping and all that, but he had never been any good at those. Arthur wasn't, either. Neither of them liked to touch. Eames was allowed to touch Arthur. Cobb had loved nothing more to hold Mal to him, and he lived for pulling both his kids onto the sofa to watch Disney with him at night. But this was just weird.

Necessary, though.

"Cobb, what are we doing?" Arthur asked. He patted Cobb's shoulder awkwardly. "Are you crying? Or... I don't know what's going on." He laughed nervously.

"I'm not crying." Cobb pulled away, still gripping Arthur's arm. He wasn't crying at all. "I'm just, I don't know, saying thank you for everything, thank you for..."

"I already told you..."

"For everything, for the last four years or more, for trying to help Mal, for being my right hand. Please don't ever forget that again. I never want to look at you and not have you know who I am. I never want to see your face on the news again. Okay?"

"Sure, Cobb. Yeah, I get it. I'm sorry."

"Jesus," Cobb said, exasperated. "It wasn't an admonition. It's just. Okay, being a Dad and not a criminal changed me a lot."

"Err. I noticed."

"You're a good man, Arthur." He felt it needed saying. He didn't care that Arthur had likely just killed many people. Or, he did care, but he couldn't let it matter.

"Thanks. So are you. Umm." He thrust the umbrella towards Cobb. "Here. I'm driving back so I don't need it. I'll just, you know. Get in the car now."

Cobb both hated and loved having to laugh at Arthur when he was like this. "Thanks," he said, taking the umbrella. "Be careful. I'll call when I get there."

"Good. Safe flight, tell the kids hi. Tell Saito to send me eight billion dollars if he finds some lying around."

"Will do." 

Cobb waited until Arthur was in the car and driving away before making his way toward the terminal.

** ** ** **

Eames lay halfway comfortable on the couch, wrapped in a duvet, when Arthur returned. He cracked an eye half-open and watched him fuss with some bags in the doorway. Arthur had Eames's portfolio with him, among other things. A backpack, various suitcases, an attache case. Canvas grocery bags, it looked like. He dripped water all over the hardwood floors, and kicked his shoes off before coming into the great room. He opened his mouth to speak. Eames quickly shut his eyes, feigning sleep. Arthur remained quiet.

Eames just wanted to listen to him move around the house for a while. He didn't know why. He was also still exhausted and not ready to sit up, not ready for conversations about explosions and headshots. The rain beating against the tall windows, and the muted light of the grey sky were too soothing for that kind of thing. Not yet. He needed another few minutes.

Arthur crossed the room silently, bringing the scents of smoke and dust with him. He had clearly showered and changed overnight, but it was in his bags, his backpack, maybe his skin for a few days.

He passed by the sofa that Eames was on. Eames felt, feather light and brief, Arthur's cold fingers against his hair. A door from down the hall opened and then closed, softly. After a few minutes, he heard the shower running.

He slept for a while, or half slept, listening to the shower and the rain. 

When Arthur came out again, a billow of clean-scented steam followed him from down the hall. Arthur could easily go for months on the barest essentials, but when he could get his hands on froofy soap and shampoo, he did. These smelled really nice, maybe extra froofy. When Arthur was safely past him, Eames opened his eyes a little bit and spied on him. Arthur was wearing jeans, heavy socks and a button down shirt. He bent down to rifle through one of the wet bags he had left in the hall. Eames took a nice long look at his ass when he did it. It was good to get back into routines after an upset. That's what Eames thought. 

Then Arthur disappeared into the kitchen with the canvas bags. He rattled around some cups or pots or whatever he was doing for about five minutes. When he returned, Eames closed his eyes again. This time he smelled chocolate.

"You can stop pretending to be asleep," Arthur said. "It's not like I haven't watched you sleep for long enough to know the difference."

Eames smiled and opened his eyes. "To be fair," he said, "I was still halfway asleep and didn't want to be disturbed."

"Are you up for being disturbed now?"

"I think I can handle it." He turned over and pulled himself up so he was half reclining against the armrest. His neck ached with a burning pain, mostly the front. Whiplash, no doubt, from getting clipped. His shoulders hurt, too. Lying still for so long hadn't helped.

Arthur handed him one of the mugs. It had a lighthouse on it. "I figured you'd be all right if I made a quick grocery run. This is the best hot chocolate in the world. I thought of this recipe myself."

Eames looked into the mug. "You just said you bought it at the grocery store."

"Yeah. But the different kind of honey and the amount... Look, don't split hairs, just taste it."

Eames did. It was dark and not too sweet. But mostly it just tasted like high end hot chocolate that Arthur had bought from the store. "That's delicious," Eames said anyway.

Arthur smirked. "Asshole, don't patronize me." He took a huge gulp of his own chocolate. "It's fucking amazing," he said when he was done.

Eames set down the mug on the end table and looked him over. His hair was wet and slightly long. He hadn't cut it since before he'd gone into hospital. The top three buttons of his shirt were open. Bruises still lined the soft skin under his eyes, and the burn on his temple looked raw, a perfect circle. The fact that it was so precise made Eames feel angry all over again. He reached out and touched it lightly.

Arthur just looked at him, at once both dark and open. "I took care of it."

Eames let his hand travel down the side of his face, over his neck and shoulder, and to the front of his shirt. He opened a few more of the buttons and pushed the fabric aside. Slid his hand inside of Arthur's shirt and curled it around the side of his ribs. Arthur's mouth dropped open, and he licked his bottom lip. Eames felt his breath speed up, but that wasn't his intention. 

"They won't be coming back," Arthur said. He set down his own mug down on the table. 

"Good," Eames said.

"SomniCore should be gone forever." He pulled the blanket off of Eames and pressed his hand over his chest, as if feeling for a heartbeat. "I killed Hollis."

"Even better." He rubbed his thumb slowly over one of Arthur's ribs.

"I got the Glitch machine and sent it off with Cobb. He's on his way to Tokyo. They're going to fix this for us. Get this thing out of our heads."

"You're brilliant."

"It's my job."

"You're still brilliant."

Arthur smiled. He didn't remove his hand from Eames's chest, and Eames didn't move his either, as Arthur picked up his mug again and finished the hot chocolate. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "It's a special kind of honey. You don't even realize."

"Yes, I said it was lovely," Eames said. "And before you even bother to ask, I did feel a bit slighted that you went on this latest adventure without me." Arthur opened his mouth to reply. "But, of course I couldn't have been much use, and time was a factor. I do understand why you did it. I'd love to tell you that next time, we can jump off a bridge or blow up a building together. But sometimes I can't help but wonder if our luck won't eventually run out. As with any game, skill can only get you so far. Chance has a hand in everything."

"I know," Arthur said. "If I had my way, none of this would even have happened. It's not something we put into motion ourselves this time. I mean, I like it here, with you? But I kind of wish we hadn't got our asses handed to us in order to get here. I really wish you hadn't gotten shot in the head."

"Me too," Eames said.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Eames reached his hand around Arthur's back and ran his fingers down his spine. Arthur scooted forward so he wouldn't have to stretch too far. He thought of Arthur's clever fingers and what they did to him, to guns, to explosives, to computers. Thought of his stupid video games.

"Arthur," he said, "this place doesn't have a Wii Station, thing."

Arthur scowled when something confused or concerned him. He took his hand out of Eames's shirt and pressed his fingertips to his forehead instead. "What are you saying? I don't understand. Do you need to pee or something?"

It hurt to laugh, pain blazed all up and down his neck, down his chest and ribs. But it felt good, too. Arthur scowled even more. "Your game system, or whatever it is," Eames said. "With the zombies and guns."

Arthur pulled his hand away. Any other time he might have shoved him, but this time he just rolled his eyes. He didn't bother hiding his amusement. "Playstation, dickhead? Or maybe Wii? _Wii-station._ Jesus. And it's more than just zombies. If you gave it a shot, you'd understand."

"I did. I shot zombies with you in your last apartment, it was fascinating for about ten minutes."

"Yeah, then you pushed me down and stuck your hand in my pants and we got killed."

"Yes, but my hand and your trousers, that is far more interesting than pressing buttons."

Arthur shrugged, a slight concession. Eames made an attempt to pull him closer, but moving his arm too much made his neck and shoulders hurt worse. He gave up. Arthur obliged him by leaning down, though. What started out as a few shallow kisses slowly escalated to Arthur trying to eat his face. Which was lovely, except that everything hurt.

"Darling, darling," Eames tried to say around Arthur's tongue.

"Yes, yes," Arthur breathed. He took Eames's free hand and shoved it between his legs. 

"I can't move my neck, Arthur," Eames finally said.

Arthur stilled over him, needing a minute to process words. Then he huffed out a laugh against Eames's lips. "Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to hurt you. Sorry." He backed off, sitting up straight. Almost primly, he replaced Eames's hand over the blanket.

"You're a beast."

"I said I was sorry."

"That's all right. Guess I won't be giving head for a while. Oh, la."

"Well, I can," Arthur said. Then, seeing the look of alarm on Eames's face, hastened to add, "Not right now. I mean when you're better, later. Or whenever. Not later later, like tonight. Unless you wanted me to. Whatever."

"I'm mad about you, Arthur. Let's go somewhere."

"We're going to Tokyo once you can handle it."

"After that," Eames said. "Somewhere not for a job, or business. Somewhere just for the hell of it. Spend a week or two bored out of our skulls whenever we're not fucking. No one to chase us and no work to be done."

"The word you're looking for is vacation. Say it with me now. _Vay-cay..._ "

"I'm going to strangle you," Eames said.

Arthur raised his eyebrows. "I'd be willing to try it."

"You _are_ a beast."

Arthur shrugged again. He stood up and stretched. His open shirt showed the fine muscles of his chest when he linked his arms behind his back and stretched his shoulders.

"I'm gonna make a fire in the fireplace," he said. 

"Well I hope it's in the fireplace," Eames said. It was a valid concern with Arthur. "And then get some wine, I suppose? And play a romantic album while we sit on a bearskin rug, gazing into each other's eyes before making sweet, sweet love?"

"I'm going to punch you in the head," Arthur informed him. "When you're better, I mean."

"Give me head, punch me in the head, always so contrary, my Arthur. So, what do you say? After Tokyo, when we're both cured of this. We'll get away somewhere, yeah? Somewhere warm and quiet. Mosquitoes and bad water the only dangers. Unreachable for a week or so, you and I."

Abruptly, Arthur turned back to him. Eames didn't know what set him off, that dark look in his eyes, nearly unreadable. He sat back down on the edge of the sofa. 

"Okay," he said, his eyes soft like they could be when he wasn't carrying out missions, and armed with C4. "Mosquitoes, that sounds nice. I can handle those."

Eames was almost convinced, at some points during their mostly separate lives, that Arthur could probably handle anything. He didn't feel the need to tell him so. Or really to tell him anything further. He figured that at this point, they both knew everything they needed to know.

Outside, the rain continued to melt the snow.


	8. Chapter 8

Giggles and shouts resounded from the break room as she made her way into it. Lizzie was the loudest, squealing about how Dr. Grisham looked so fucking _professional_ on TV.

"Or on _the telly_ ," Darlene corrected in a faux-British accent. "'Cause that's the way Mr. Bishop would say it. _Fuck_ , he was hot."

It had been a week since a man named Luke Bishop had come to take Scout out of the hospital, claiming to be his husband. Two days, or maybe three, if you counted nights as days (and Emma, as a nurse, sometimes did,) since she'd last seen both of them and their third partner, on the side of the road. Mr. Bishop (if that was his real name, which she doubted,) blue-lipped and bleeding from a wound on the side of his head.

A week, and the news story had just come out now about the mystery amnesia patient who had gone home to his family and was requesting privacy. The station had interviewed Dr. Grisham. She'd stated that she was happy for The Bishops and all their loved ones, and she was glad that the hospital had been able to provide care for them etc. etc. Saying all the correct things.

Emma came into the room and sat down with her lunch: a home-made salad and a cup of grapes. She loved this part of the day. Just her and her vulgar girls letting off steam. Darlene, Lizzie, and Marian – known on the television and to patients as Dr. Grisham. The group on her shift, able-bodied, tough, thick-skinned and foul-mouthed. This was down-time.

"Scout was hot," Darlene offered. "I mean, once you could see his face. And he was pretty fucking built."

"He wasn't hot," Marian offered. "He was _cute._ In, like, that boyish kind of way. Yeah, his husband was hot, gotta agree with that."

"I liked them both," Emma said, pouring lite dressing on her salad, closing the tupperware and then shaking it up. 

"Yeah," Darlene teased, "we all know how much you 'liked' him." She made air quotes with her fingers. "How you'd always be in the room 'reading' to him and 'helping' him."

"Fuck you and your air quotes," Emma said, grinning. Blushing, still.

"'Oh, oh,'" Darlene mocked, in a fake, high voice, "'I'm pretty sure it's my turn to bathe him tonight!' God, you could not have been more obvious."

Emma threw a grape at Darlene. It bounced off her forehead.

"Fuck you!" Darlene laughed, and threw it back. Emma dodged it.

"No, seriously," Lizzie said. "I have to agree that his husband was really fucking hot. I like them like that. Huge. All muscley and shit. Mmm."

"Did you see his mouth?" Marian said, fanning herself. "I'd sit on his face for hours."

Emma turned uncharacteristically quiet. Yeah, sure, everyone had a crush. And she'd been doing this job long enough to know that nothing was sacred, and nothing was off limits. Corpse-jokes, practical jokes involving fake occult specimens and urine samples, and, hell, they even made fun of some of the stupider patients. This was behind the curtains, and back here, anything was fair game. It was the only way to stay sane.

But this one got to her a little. She guessed that it was because she'd seen them outside of the hospital, so desperate. Because Scout—rather, Arthur—had called on her to help. He'd allowed her, however briefly, into his very private life, because he had trusted her. And the other man, the one who called himself Bishop, lying in the back seat like that, bleeding. Arthur and his other friend, the professor guy, so plainly afraid for him in the near-dark, on the side of the highway. It was so far away from sterile white hospital sheets and bleached walls. It was real. It was dangerous. And she couldn't tell any of her friends. She ached to, though. 

But because he had let her in, she would never breathe a word of it. And she felt a little funny about making jokes about them.

"Emma?" Darlene said, tapping the top of her head, hard enough to hurt. "Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey. What the hell? Are you stoned?Got into the drug box again?"

"Yeah, that's right," Emma said. "It's getting to be a bad habit."

"Next thing, you're gonna be out on the street giving head for twenty bucks a pop just so support your habit," Lizzie joked.

"Yeah," Emma said. "I'll tell your Mom you said hi."

They laughed, uproarious and too loud.

"So, fucking, this guy comes into ER last night, right?" Lizzie said. "And he's like, 'I think I got a lightbulb stuck up my ass!' I was like, Oh, shit, it's gonna be one of those nights."

"Did he?" Darlene asked.

"I'll show you the X rays," Lizzie said. "Holy shit. Nights like that go really fast. I need the longest fucking vacation, like out on a cruise."

"Oh," Emma said, remembering. "Getting back to Scout, that last night he was here? We were talking about, like, if he was some kind of super rich secret agent or something..."

"Which I think he was, or is," Marian interrupted.

Emma ignored her, because she knew she was right. "Anyway, that last night he was here, he was like, 'If I ever found out I was a millionaire or something, I'd send you all on a cruise.' I was like, 'Fuck yes, I'd go on a cruise.' Well, I didn't say that in so many words, but still. You just reminded me. God, I wish. That'd be so nice."

"Out there in the middle of the ocean," Lizzie said. "Surrounded by guys like him and his partner, guy or whatever."

"Husband," Emma corrected. She wasn't sure if it was true or not, but it was what they had told everyone, so it was truth enough for her.

"Yeah, that's what we'd do," Darlene said, even though no one had offered any suggestions. "Just get on a big boat, all of us one day. Get tons of massages, bake in the sun all day, get laid every single night. That'd be the life."

"Yeah, I'm so sure that Secret Agent Man is going to come back into our lives, like, with an armful of cash," Lizzie said, "and all his really hot friends and take us all on a million-billion dollar vacation. Yup. All of us. He'll be like, 'Here you go, thanks for tying me to my bed every night.'"

That last part made Emma cringe, but she hid it. She had legitimately hated restraining him. The rest had insinuated that she secretly liked tying him up—Scout himself had made the same joke—but it had really kind of bugged her out, seeing the honest fear in his eyes. She hated doing it to anyone, really. And it was mostly old, senile people she had to do it to. It was worse than changing shitty sheets and cleaning up blood. 

"He liked you," Marian said. When Emma looked at her, her eyes were unusually sincere. "You made it easy for him."

"Yeah, well," Emma said, shrugging. "Whatever. He seemed nice. And he was hot. So that helps."

"Cute," Marian corrected again. "The husband: he was hot."

They went about finishing their lunches and cleaning up, still laughing and swearing at each other. 

That night, a six year old girl came into the hospital through ER and went straight into surgery. She'd been hit by a drunk driver. She died a few hours later in ICU. Emma cleaned the room after they'd taken her out of it. It sucked. You never got used to it when it was little kids. 

By the time she got home, she was exhausted and pissed off, the merriment from earlier in the day long since faded. She wanted a glass of wine and to sit down and watch Idol. She wished for quiet, and to not be bothered for the rest of the night. 

Someone knocked on her door. Every time this happened, she was always wary. It was New York, but not that New York was bad. Any city was bad, and she lived alone.

In her slippers and bathrobe, she looked out the peephole. It was the UPS guy. She knew this guy because he always delivered stuff to her, care packages from her Mom, books from Amazon, things like that. This time he was holding a huge box. She opened the door.

"Hey," he said. "I need you to sign for this."

"Okay. Wow." She took the electronic clip-board from him and signed. "Wonder what this is. I didn't order anything."

"Have a nice night," the UPS guy said.

"You too."

Emma took the box inside. Something stirred inside her, something eager and squirmy and warm. Because, what the fuck was this? Her intuition made her think it was something cool, something exciting. Her life this past month had been pretty exciting, now that she thought of it.

She took the box into her kitchenette and cut the tape off with scissors. There was no return address.

Inside the box was another box, this one white. Emlbazoned in gold across the top of the box were the words, "FANTASMIC MAGIC SHOP" with the address below it. Right here in new york.

Her entire self tingling, she took the smaller box out of the bigger box and opened that one. And she knew, right away, even before she parted the paper over it (purple, with silver stars,) what it was.

A big dumb silk magician's hat.

 _'I pull rabbits out of hats or something?'_ Scout had asked her, when she'd suggested that he was maybe a rich Vegas magician.

She fully expected to pull a stuffed rabbit, or even a chocolate rabbit out of the hat. What she pulled out instead was an envelope with her name typed on it. She opened it with shaking hands.

Four tickets fell out of the envelope. She already knew they were to a cruise on one of those bigass cruiseliners to somewhere hot, because the picture on the tickets was of said bigass cruiseliner.

It was the note, though, that she clutched to her chest, grinning like an idiot, feeling like she won the lottery.

_Told you I would.  
Thank you for everything.  
Yours,  
Scout_

** ** ** **

\--End


End file.
